- ^f^^ 



Columbta SEnibensitg 

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 



THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 
ON RESTORATION COMEDY 



This monograph has been recommended by the 
Department of Comparative Literature as a contri- 
bution to the literature of the subject worthy of 

publication. 

J. B. FLETCHER, 

Professor of Comparative Literature. 



THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 



ON 



RESTOEATION COMEDY 

BY 

DUDLEY HOWE MILES, Ph.D. 




THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1910 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1910, 
By the COLUMBIA UNIVEESITY PEES8. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1910. 




Kortonoli i^regg 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A275(;S8 



/ 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF 
MY MOTHER 



PREFACE 

This essay in comparative literature attempts 
to determine the nature and extent of the influ- 
ence exerted by Moliere on English comedy 
from 1660 to 1700. Its purpose is not so much 
to identify particular cases of indebtedness to 
the French master as to study the general 
features of his influence on the art and outlook 
of the period. I shall be gratified if it con- 
tributes in any way to a better understanding 
of Restoration comedy, or to a more extended 
appreciation of the greatest comic genius of 
France. 

The book in its present form is the outcome 
of a series of studies of individual writers, 
begun some years ago at the University of 
Chicago and carried out in an effort to ap- 
proach the scientific accuracy and thoroughness 
for which Dr. J. M. Manly is so well known. 
I have therefore examined nearly every Resto- 
ration comedy that was accessible to me. The 
results, indicated in the appendix, represent 
vii 



viii PREFACE 

my personal opinion after careful deliberation 
over doubtful points. Those who have pre- 
ceded me in the field have relied so largely 
on second-hand information or have been so 
much carried away by the desire of establishing 
indebtedness that a searching personal investi- 
gation was prerequisite to any safe generaliza- 
tions. I do not pretend to have discovered 
every trace of influence in the period, but I 
think so few direct borrowings have escaped me 
that my results are a basis for valid induction. 

In mechanical details the volume conforms 
to the series in which it appears. I have tried 
to make quotations exact, but without repro- 
ducing peculiarities in the use of italics, small 
capitals, and similar matters. Full titles to all 
references in the notes will be found in the 
bibliography. 

In the preparation of the work I have con- 
tracted many obligations : to Professor Myra 
Reynolds of the University of Chicago for 
starting me on the subject ; to Dr. J. M. 
Manly for generous advice and criticism; to 
Mr. A. E. Hill of the English Library of the 
University of Chicago, to Mrs. Margaret 
McKennon, Librarian of Southwestern Univer- 
sity, to the librarians and attendants of Har- 



PREFACE ix 

vard College Library, to the officials of the 
Library of Columbia University, for securing 
or providing the necessary material ; to Mr. H. 
C. Chatfield-Taylor, who at one point in my 
research cordially extended me the use of his 
great Moliere collection. Miss Winifred Smith 
has generously assisted me in several matters. 
In the Columbia faculty I am indebted to 
Professor Brander Matthews for many helpful 
suggestions and for criticism on points of im- 
portance, and to Professor J. E. Spingarn for 
discussion of features of the treatment. It is a 
pleasure to acknowledge also the very valuable 
criticism of Professor Ashley H. Thorndike. 
My chief obligation is to Professor Jefferson 
B. Fletcher, through whose kindness it has 
been possible for the volume to appear in its 
present form, and for whose unfailing interest 
I cannot here sufficiently express my gratitude. 

Columbia University, June 1, 1910. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Moliere's Comedy 1 

II. Restoration Comedy .... 31 

III. The Beginning of the Influence . 61 

IV. The Attitude toward Moliere . . 79 
V. Plot 100 

VI. Character 133 

VII. Dialogue 161 

VIII. The Close of the Period . . . 192 

IX. Conclusion 218 

Appendix. A List of Borrowings .... 223 

Bibliography, I. Texts 243 

Bibliography, II. General Works and Special 

Studies 250 

Index . . 269 



zi 



THE INFLUENCE OP MOLIERE 
ON RESTORATION COMEDY 

CHAPTER I 

moliere's comedy 

If on the street we see a man of pompous 
gravity slip upon a banana skin and sit down 
in a very abrupt and fooKsh fashion, we turn 
away to hide our amusement. If at the play 
we see a miser talking and gesticulating ex- 
citedly about his treasure to the secret lover 
of his daughter, the frightened lover replying 
each time with a reference to the daughter, 
we cannot keep from laughing at their mutual 
mistake. We know these incidents are comic, 
just as we know after a single reading that 
Shelley's To a Skylark is poetic. But when 
we undertake to frame a definition of the 
comic in general, we find success as difiicult 
as our laughter has been irresistible. We 



2 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

may lose from sight whole groups of comic 
incidents and evolve some fine-spun theory 
that gives delight to a scholastic mind but 
seems incomplete to one with a keen zest for 
the comic in hfe and literature; or we may 
in the end content ourselves with the simple 
conclusion that the vast majority of comic 
effects depend upon the sudden perception of 
some incongruity or contrast not felt as seri- 
ous or irreconcilable. 

Advancing this statement of the case as a 
convenient summary rather than a bullet- 
proof definition, I may add that the comic is 
not an unvarying quantity, that the comic 
sense has on the contrary developed only in 
society, since it involves some norm or standard 
of comparison. I am stating a mere truism 
to say that man has arrived at his notions of 
the usual and the sensible only through con- 
tact with his fellows, and that the comic 
accordingly varies in different ages of the 
world and in different communities of the same 
age. Imagine a Hottentot or an inhabitant of 
the South Sea Islands suddenly transported 
to the streets of New York. He might laugh 
at the tall silk hats or the finely tailored suits, 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 3 

but those about him would be so far from 
joining in his laughter that they would smile 
at his bare head and scanty garments. Imag- 
ine how dismal a reception even the best hits 
in the most popular comedy, except those 
depending on the mere shock of surprise, 
would secure from a theater full of such men. 
For it is obvious that every comic effect in a 
play depends for success on the existence of 
a common viewpoint among the members of 
the audience, and that those events and per- 
sons in clearest contradiction with the man- 
ners and views of the audience will seem most 
comic. It follows from these remarks that 
the comic does not appeal to our sympathies. 
We may view with generous indignation the 
bent figure of Shylock leaving the court-room 
or shake our sides at the rolhcking humor of 
Falstaff, but in the second case as truly as in 
the first the pleasure cannot properly be called 
an effect of the comic. In other words, the 
humorous differs from the comic, strictly so- 
called, in being consonant with warm affection. 
Comedy as a type in literature makes use of 
both kinds of appeal, but the introduction of 
humor is a development of modern times. 



4 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Related to this consideration of particular 
comic moments in a play is a difference be- 
tween tragedy and comedy as subdivisions of 
the drama. Tragedy moves in an ideal world 
where the crimes and grand passions of men 
absorb our attention from the trivial and the 
commonplace. It neglects the superficial cir- 
cumstance of life to pierce to the essential 
qualities of the soul in serious or irreconcilable 
conflict with universal law. This character- 
istic tendency is observable not only in 
Sophocles and Racine and Shakspere, but in 
such powerful moderns as Ibsen and Haupt- 
mann and Echegaray. Comedy, on the other 
hand, has usually moved near the world of 
external fact, where the incongruities are 
more tangible and where they do not affect 
the issues of life too profoundly. It has ac- 
cordingly depicted the common vices and 
ridiculous follies of mankind by means of 
types more or less easily recognized in the 
different countries where it has originated. 
Among the poets of the New Comedy in 
Greece so closely did Menander copy the de- 
tails of the rich and polished society in which 
he lived that an Alexandrian grammarian 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 5 

exclaimed, "O Menander and life! which of 
you copied the other!" Whenever a poet 
of medieval England wished to relieve the 
somber tone of a miracle play with the brighter 
colors of comedy, he took some picture from 
shepherd life or went back through his ex- 
perience to find a suitable shrew for Noah's 
wife. In France a long succession of farces 
copied matter from political and social circles 
so strikingly that at length Henry IV had to re- 
strict subjects to private life. The commedia 
deir arte of Italy, among many a synonym 
for conventionality in character-drawing, was 
so realistic in its origin that several of the 
types appearing later in an unending series 
of masks are easily traced to separate locahties 
in the peninsula.^ The Spanish comedy of 
cloak and sword, which to foreigners seems 
a tissue of the most artificial imbroglios, was 
in the hands of Lope de Vega a not very much 
distorted reflection of the manners of the 
country. Indeed, it has generally been true 
that, regarded as types of drama, tragedy 
has tended to the ideal and the universal, 
while comedy has tended toward the realistic 

1 Cf. Moland, p. 12 ff.; Flamini, p. 313 &. 



6 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

and the local, because tragedy deals with 
essential qualities and irreconcilable con- 
flicts, while comedy deals with the incon- 
gruities of life, and succeeds only where the 
norms of judgment prevalent in a community 
are readily applicable. 

Such closeness to the facts of hfe is char- 
acteristic of Moliere, whom most Frenchmen 
regard as the Shakspere of their nation. He 
never mixes with his satire the boundless 
fancy of Aristophanes or the charmingly 
delicate creations of A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream. His interest is in life and the char- 
acters which everyday life presents. Such 
interest, indeed, was pecuHarly fostered by 
the circumstances of . his career. Born ^ in 
the home of a prosperous furniture dealer 
in a bourgeois section of Paris, he must have 
seen more than one wealthy neighbor running 
up long bills in a ridiculous effort to become 
a ^^ gentleman" in spite of many remon- 
strances from his sensible wife. He may 
have found in his own father ^ an example of 
the unscrupulous money-lender who exacts 

' Jan. 15, 1622. 

2 Cf. Larroumet, p. 15. 



ON RESTORATION COIMEDY 7 

twenty-five per cent for useless old furniture 
and hangings. Certainly the bourgeois atti- 
tude, with its common sense and spirit of 
ridicule, was familiar to his childhood and 
helped to mold the ideals of his boyhood 
while he was a day student at the College de 
Clermont. Later, when he had organized 
a company of players and began his twelve 
years of strolling through the provinces, he 
enlarged his view of man to include every 
variety of local type with its peculiarities of 
costume and speech — simple peasant girls 
and rascally servants ; pretentious country 
aristocrats, unfortunate husbands, and thick- 
witted suitors ; the bailiffs and collectors of 
petty taxes, with all the self-important village 
society aping the fashions of the metropoHs. 
On his return to Paris in his thirty-seventh 
year and the establishment of his company 
at the court of Louis XIV, he not only re- 
newed acquaintance with the shopkeepers 
of his father's quarter, but found new fields 
for the penetrating observation of character 
— listened to empty-headed courtiers and 
prudish women of fashion, dined among the 
devotees of a literary fad and the foppish 



8 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

leaders of different court circles. His own 
troupe, too, and his family, gave him the most 
intimate understanding of the various turns 
that love and jealousy and other primary 
instincts of humanity take in men and women 
of different temperaments. Hardly could 
one imagine a career better suited to develop 
a full understanding of the essential unity 
of human nature and a keen sense of its mani- 
fold irregularities. 

No one certainly has made more of his 
opportunities than Moliere. He did not 
merely observe narrowly the superficial side of 
hfe, note the style of a coat or the color 
of a ribbon ; he pierced below to the nature 
of the man. His friend Boileau summed up 
his character accurately in the word " Con- 
templator." The tradition which pictures him 
sitting in a provincial barber-shop, intent upon 
the frequenters conversing about business or 
gossip, is true in spirit if not in fact. The 
other picture which one of his enemies has 
preserved is as illuminating as it is vivid. In 
one scene of the comedy Zelinde a character 
describes what he saw Moliere doing in the 
shop below : ^^Elomire didn't utter a word 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 9 

all the time I was down there. I found him 
leaning on a counter like a man who was 
dreaming. He kept his eyes glued on three 
or four ladies of quality who were haggling 
over some lace. He seemed to listen intently 
to what they were saying, and from the 
movement of his eyes you would have said 
he was piercing to the bottom of their souls 
to discover what they were secretly thinking. 
I even beheve he had a note-book and that 
under his cloak he took down unperceived 
the best things they said. He's a dangerous 
man. There are some people who take their 
hands everywhere they go. You might say 
of him that everywhere he goes he _ takes his 
eyes and ears." ^ 

This absorbing interest in character as it 
manifests itself in everyday life is a distin- 
guishing feature of those comedies which he 
produced in rapid succession during the 
fifteen years that intervened between his 
return to Paris and his death.^ For this 
reason the classification of his work is difH- 

1 A translation of Zelinde, sc. 5, quoted in Moliere, 
(Euvres, x. 279. 

2 Feb. 17, 1673. 



10 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

cult ; serious objections can be brought to 
almost any grouping of his plays. The first 
two, VEtourdi and Le Depit Amoureux, 
written and first performed in the provinces, 
very clearly belong to the comedy of intrigue 
type, where the plot consists of a succession 
of improbable incidents and confusing com- 
phcations, the characters little more than 
marionettes pulled hither and yon at the need 
of the artificial situations, the interest centered 
in the ceaseless movement and the constant 
surprise furnished by the turning and wind- 
ing of the plot. Yet in VEtourdi Eraste is 
no more of a mask figure than the hero of Le 
Menteur, sl piece formerly acclaimed as the 
beginning of comedy of character ; and in Le 
Depit Amoureux the love quarrel is presented 
with so much naturalness that it could be 
acted to day as a scene in any modern comedy. 
Les Fourheries de Scapin, brought out at the 
height of Moliere's career, is also a brilliant 
specimen of the genre. But in others, such 
as Monsieur de Pourceaugnac and Le Medecin 
malgre lui, the satiric treatment of manners 
takes up so much of the play and exercises 
so controlling an influence on the structure 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 11 

that one hesitates to put them in this class. 
Such uncertainty, however, does not obscure 
the fact that one group of Moliere's plays, 
larger or smaller according to the precon- 
ceptions of the classifier, may be called comedy 
of intrigue. 

Another group may be styled romantic or 
heroic-pastoral : Don Garde, Melicerte, Les 
Amants Magnifiques, Le Princesse d'Elide, 
Psyche, Le Sicilien. Except the first, which 
was an effort of Moliere to win fame as a 
serious poet, they were produced to furnish 
entertainment at the royal fetes of Louis XIV, 
and were interspersed with ballets, in which 
the king and his courtiers delighted to appear. 
Though many passages display a poetic grace 
in the treatment of ideal persons and places 
not usually attributed to this champion of 
common sense, these plays, with the exception 
of the pleasing trifle, Le Sicilien, contain little 
evidence of Moliere' s comic powers or his 
genius for observation. The group may 
therefore be neglected in a study of his in- 
fluence on Restoration comedy. 

The type of comedy which belongs dis- 
tinctively to Moliere and upon which his 



12 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

greatness as a dramatist is based falls entirely 
under the head, comedy of manners and 
character. The beginning was made in Les 
Precieuses Ridicules, the action of which is in 
the tone of farce. But the action is not what 
holds our attention ; it is only a frame for 
the picture of an affectation in the actual life 
of the day. Moliere virtually took typical 
figures from the parterre, set them on the 
stage, and thus allowed the audience to watch 
itself. In Sganarelle the incidents are like- 
wise chosen to render ridiculous the typically 
absurd jealous husband, but the interest of the 
audience is centered on the irresistibly laugh- 
able series of qui-pro-quo situations, so that the 
piece is comedy of intrigue instead of comedy 
of manners. But with UEcole des Maris and 
UEcole des Femmes Moliere became clearly 
conscious of his aims. He forsook conven- 
tional types and artificial imbroglios, so far as 
his public would allow, in order to express his 
own convictions about the society around him 
which he knew so well. Sometimes he was 
obliged to modify his design to conform his 
play to the whims of the Grand Monarque 
who was his patron, as one sees clearly in the 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 13 

last acts of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; some- 
times he developed his idea into no more than 
a sketch, an excuse for the ballets which were 
all the go at court, as in La Comtesse d'Escar- 
hagnas ; sometimes he mingled an element 
of farce with the satire of mankind, as in 
L^Avare ; but everywhere he displayed his 
absorbing interest in actual life and living 
characters. In two of his plays he dealt with 
subjects of such profound and universal sig- 
nificance that by some they have been termed 
comedies of character par excellence, and by 
others high comedy, as a kind of comedy 
rivaling tragedy in the importance of the 
interests involved. Certainly these two, Le 
Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope, with a third, 
Les Femmes Savantes, reveal the essential 
qualities of Moliere in the chief comic master- 
pieces of French drama. 

Indeed, one may go further and say that 
the beginning of French comedy of manners 
is to be found in this third class of Mohere's 
work. The great mass of comedy produced 
in the period before Moliere's advent was 
totally different in spirit. The old French 
farce and its realistic satire of political, social, 



14 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

and private life had disappeared from the 
theater before the universal popularity of 
the commedia delV arte, with its conventional 
types of character and artificial plots. In 
higher kinds of comedy the same spirit pre- 
vailed. Larivey in the last quarter of the 
sixteenth century had done much to estabUsh 
the ItaUan tradition, to center interest on 
intrigue instead of on manners, to deal with 
equivoke and disguise, the turns of chance and 
deceit, instead of imitating nature. This 
intrigue ij^e was revived in the second 
quarter of the seventeenth century by Rotrou, 
who delved in the inexhaustible mine of 
Spanish comedy for a vast variety of unreal 
situations. He was followed by Scarron, 
who took almost every one of his plays from 
Spain, burlesquing his sources by an enormous 
buffoonery and an exaggerated satire that 
made the theater echo with laughter. This 
same cleverness in devising variations and 
combinations of incident in a world subject 
to few of the conditions of actual life was 
continued by Thomas Corneille even after 
the close of Moliere's career. 

These general statements concerning the 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 15 

predecessors of Moliere are, like all general 
statements, subject to exceptions. In La 
Belle Plaideuse of Boisrobert we look into a 
shop in the jewelers' section of Paris and see 
the mingled crowd of high society and bour- 
geoisie. The picture is superficial, but it is 
copied from life. In Les Visionnaires of 
Desmarets a succession of almost unconnected 
scenes presents a succession of ^^ humors" in 
something of Ben Jonson's manner, with the 
purpose of interesting the audience in the 
faithfulness of the delineation. The great 
Corneille also made some advance toward 
a comedy of manners. In La Galerie du 
Palais we overhear the talk of linen-drapers 
and woolen merchants, booksellers and book- 
buyers, quite different from the artificial 
language of contemporary plays. We see 
also an actual servant instead of the tradi- 
tional nurse. Le Menteur is likewise a begin- 
ning for true comedy, improbable as the hero 
is ; for some scenes, such as that between 
Dorante and his indignant father, are the 
necessary result of character. But all these 
plays are interesting chiefly as prophecies. 
The incidents are still ingenious inventions, 



16 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

not natural occurrences ; the customs are 
still touched with artificiality ; the characters 
are still mere sketches ; the dialogue is not 
yet the conversation of men and women from 
the street, the shop, and the home, expressing 
their own ideas and feelings. In short, even 
these few forerunners of the coming change 
did not hold to the conception of allowing 
the audience to watch itself in typical char- 
acters moving about on the stage. This 
revolution in taste from the strange to the 
natural is what Moliere's comedy of manners 
accomplished. 

The reason why the innovation succeeded 
is that Moliere is a typically French author. 
He has all the clearness and logic of the race. 
He indulges in no irresponsible imaginings. 
He gives way to no allurements of the fancy 
delighting in its own capriciousness. He 
presents instead some eminently reasonable 
Ariste or Cleante, who explains, often at a 
length that wearies English ears, what might 
otherwise seem nonsensical or wrongheaded. 
Chance does not determine the succession of 
events in his plays as it does frequently in the 
romantic comedy of Shakspere and Fletcher. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 17 

Even when his plot is brought to a close by 
the discovery of long-lost parents or the inter- 
vention of a powerful king, the denouement 
does not impress one as illogical. Certainly 
one of his distinguishing traits is lucidity. 

He also has the lightness of satire that 
belongs to the indefinable esprit gaulois, 
a hatred of the wearisome and the pedantic, 
an instinctive dehght in ridicule and raillery ^r" 
without bitterness or rage, a laughter full of 
vivacity but arising from the keenest logic. 
The definition I gave a moment ago of the 
comic, 'Hhe perception of incongruity," is 
especially applicable to the French. They 
take little pleasure in the free play of the 
imagination for itself. Their laughter is 
always reasonable. 

He was typically French, too, in putting 
meaning into his work. The plays which de- 
light English readers, A Midsummer NigMs 
Dream or The Tempest, are ill-understood by 
most Frenchmen. They seek to comprehend 
what ought to be enjoyed by the imagination. 
They feel insecure in the cloudlands of fancy. 
Their abiding sense of reality is troubled by 
these unsubstantial pageants that fade and 



18 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

pass away into nothingness. But in UEcole 
des Femmes and Les Femmes Savantes they 
find the famihar circumstances of hfe arranged 
so as to present a penetrating view of marriage 
and woman with the utmost gaiety and clear- 
ness. Beneath the hghtness of the French 
is this insistent seriousness of taste, which 
takes deep pleasure in what seems didactic 
and prosaic to Englishmen because its gaiety 
is not careless and unreflecting. 

Another reason why Moliere succeeded in 
effecting the change in taste from the extraor- 
dinary to the natural is that he wrote in 
the opening years of the reign of Louis XIV, 
when the French nation was most French.^ 
It will be recalled that the successive ap- 
proaches toward estabhshing the absolute 
power of the crown made by Louis XI and 
Henry IV were all but completed by Richelieu 
before his death in 1642. He robbed the 
magistrates of their powers, supplanted the 
princes and nobles by ministers of his own 
creation, and reduced the people to payers of 
taxes. During the ministry of his successor, 
the Italian Mazarin, the different elements, 
* For this period, cf. Lavisse. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 19 

heartened by the Puritan successes in the 
Civil War in England, rose for the last time 
against this centralization of authority. This 
series of disturbances, known as the Fronde, 
was characterized by a spirit of faction. The 
kingdom was distraught by shifting purposes 
and enmities, — magistrates siding now with 
the people and later timidly resigning them- 
selves to the royal power ; a prince this day 
leading the armies of France, the next fighting 
against them with the revolutionists, later 
entering the service of Spain ; the people 
themselves barricading the streets of Paris 
against the royal troops, driving the royal 
family out of the palace, covering the streets 
with satires on Mazarin and his foreign 
associates, and later filling the bourgeoisie 
with uncertainty and dread. Distrust and 
fear were rife. Society was in a state of dis- 
integration. 

Moreover, the nation was not, and for some 
time had not been, wholly French. Foreign 
manners in dress and behavior were made to 
prevail in higher circles under the influence 
of Anne of Austria and the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet, but had not yet been assimilated to 



20 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

the national character. The theater was so 
thoroughly foreign that it is safe to say half 
the successful plays were taken from Spain. 
Even the lowest classes, no longer clamoring 
for the old farce, stood wide-eyed before the 
antics and improvisations of the Italian com- 
panies in the commedia delV arte. 

With the subsidence of the Fronde in the 
middle fifties the nation came into its own. 
The late disturbances had aroused among the 
middle classes a keen desire for order and tran- 
quilhty, which the succession of Louis XIV in 
1661 soon turned into patriotic exultation in a 
king of their own race who governed with jus- 
tice, revived languishing industries and com- 
merce, and later made French arms victorious 
wherever they appeared. The bourgeois of 
Paris who ten years before had been afraid of 
having his doors beaten in by gangs barricad- 
ing the streets, now settled into a comforta- 
ble, prosperous condition, self-satisfied and 
self-regarding. Even in the late fifties the 
banker, the lawyer, the merchant, instead of 
scanning his neighbor suspiciously, began to 
observe with lively interest the vices and fol- 
lies developed by peaceful life. His standards 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 21 

of conduct became more definite and univer- 
sal under the growing culture of the age. The 
enthusiasm of the bourgeois was aroused by 
the splendor of the court to which Louis drew 
every noble of the realm by making all de- 
pendent on his exchequer. The mingling 
of noble and bourgeois encouraged by Louis's 
disregard of birth and artificial advantage 
in the distribution of responsibilities and 
rewards tended to supplant the peculiar pre- 
possessions of the bourgeoisie with saner stan- 
dards of judgment. More influential was the 
Hotel de Rambouillet, with its introduction 
of the refining influence of woman on society 
and conversation, which had for many years 
helped to spread broadcast norms of conduct 
through the formation of many circles of 
imitators.^ Men had become keen and quick- 
witted, impressionable to finer shades of 
distinction, and at the same time less indi- 
vidual and prejudiced in judging conduct 
and character. Thus pohtical and social 
conditions combined to transform the rude 
audience of Richelieu's day into -a pohshed 
worldly society with greater community of 

1 Cf. Livet. 



22 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

feeling and taste than had ever existed before 
in France. 

For it will be remembered that even 
by 1636 ^ the common people had ceased 
to attend theatrical performances. They 
thronged the mountebank's show by Pont 
Neuf or the fairs at Saint Germain, but 
the theater was filled with the higher classes, 
who, as has been shown, were becoming more 
and more refined and gradually developing 
a strong spirit of society, which is always 
hostile to individual variation from accepted 
usage. It was to this society, which had at 
length assimilated the elements of foreign 
culture and developed its own native traits, 
that Moliere appealed.^ He, a child of old 
Paris, reared, as I have related, in its tradi- 
tions and familiar with its prejudices, voiced 
the spirit of its merchants and bankers when 
he laughed at the extravagances of the pre- 
cieuses ridicules, the inflated ambition of 
Monsieur Jourdain, the foolish aspirations of 
Leonard de Pourceaugnac, the ridiculous pre- 
tensions of Comtesse d'Escarbagnas. But 

1 Cf . Reynier in Petit de Julleville, iv. 358 f. 

2 For a study of these audiences, cf . Despois, livres 
v., vi. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 23 

there is something more than the prepos- 
sessions of his class even in these plays, and 
in Le Misanthrope he produced a drama it 
would have been impossible to produce in 
1660, a drama which is as perfect an expression 
as the spirit of society has ever attained. 

The uniqueness of Moliere's comedy is not 
explained by the circumstances of his life, 
nor by his French characteristics — his clear- 
ness and logic, his instinctive satire and 
seriousness of purpose — nor even by the 
strong social tone that pervades his work. 
All these features show how he could accom- 
plish what was virtually a revolution in public 
taste, but the peculiar quality of his work is 
to be found after all only in his genius. It 
is very difficult to give an adequate idea of 
his vis comica, of the inexhaustible gaiety 
which sets so many scenes ringing with silvery 
laughter. Difficult as this comic spirit is to 
define, he would be dull indeed who could resist 
the dialogue of Sosie with his lantern in Amphi- 
tryon, or the lesson in philosophy given to Mon- 
sieur Jourdain, or the consultation of self-suffi- 
cient Sganarelle with suspicious Geronte in Le 
Medecin malgre lui. Literature contains few 



24 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

figures so inextinguishably comic as the im- 
pertinent Dorine of Le Tartuffe or the archly 
malign Toinette of Le Malade Imaginaire. 
Even in his most serious situations his verve 
appears in hardly diminished vigor. When 
the headstrong miser is about to strike his 
obstinate son, the servant breaks in to relieve 
the strain with the unconscious buffoonery 
of his reconciliation. When the audience is 
oppressed by the impending doom of Orgon, 
the incredulous stepmother opens the door 
to brighten the whole scene with delightful 
comedy. When the jealousy of Alceste has 
become almost painfully intense, the breath- 
less valet appears to draw forth volleys of 
laughter while he searches every pocket for 
the note he has forgotten to bring from his 
master's table. The gaiety which enlivened 
many a medieval fabliau and farce has 
nowhere found a more hearty or vivacious 
expression than in the comedy of Moliere. 

Let me repeat, however, that this vis 
comica is different in origin from that familiar 
to English readers in the work of Shakspere 
and Jonson. Mohere has none of Shakspere's 
fantastic and ideal creations ; no mischievous 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 25 

Puck or light-footed Ariel glides through his 
scenes. Nor is he much closer to the Shak- 
spere who leaves the stage to those irrepressi- 
bly witty fools and clowns who engage in 
the lively give and take of conceits or enter- 
tain the spectator with a nice derangement 
of epitaphs. To the pit in Elizabethan days 
Feste and Launcelot Gobbo were humorous 
rather than purely comic figures ; that is, the 
audience laughed with them rather than at 
them. Both carman and courtier might have 
said with a ring of hearty good-nature, ^'How 
witty the fool is!" or ''What irrepressible 
humor the clown has!" Moliere presented 
figures decidedly different. He delineated 
a Monsieur Jourdain to point the folly of 
colossal conceit, or a servant Martine to show 
up the ridiculousness of affectation and 
pedantry. Ben Jonson is somewhat nearer 
to Moliere's comic spirit. Yet even The 
Alchemist, generally considered Jonson's best 
performance, is not very much in the style 
of Les Femmes Savantes. In the handling of 
Dapper and Drugger and Sir Epicure Mam- 
mon we see all too clearly the Plautine con- 
ception of comedy, in which no emphasis is 



26 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

laid on the unsocial or insincere elements of 
character. The comic effect does not come 
so much from the absurd expectations of 
those characters as from the supremely witty 
way in which the expectations are defeated 
of fulfilment. The play is a contest of the 
clever with the dull or unsuspecting, and we 
laugh with those who get the better. The 
Plautine conception appears in Moliere also, 
but it is modified by a conviction, more pro- 
found than appears anywhere in Jonson, even 
in Bartholomew Fair, that conduct should con- 
form to the demands of society. In his 
comedy of manners he laughs at the attempt 
of folly and vice to supplant nature and 
reason. His gaiety arises from the feeling 
that the irregularities of ordinary life are in 
themselves irresistibly amusing. 

But one who thinks only of the comic 
verve of Moliere is far from understanding 
his attitude toward life. The universality 
of his appeal does not rest on the widespread 
desire of men to be diverted. Had that been 
the case, he would have been superseded in 
his own country by Regnard, Beaumarchais, 
and Scribe, and would have found small 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 27 

audience outside of France. He was not only 
an unrivaled comedian, but a thinker upon 
some of the profound problems of life. Yet 
he v/as not a philosopher with an ordered 
system. All his comedies rest upon very few 
convictions. He believed most thoroughly 
that our guide in life should be our own in- 
stincts. Whoever tries to suppress or distort 
the natural impulses becomes ridiculous. 
If Arnolphe rears a child in ignorance and 
restrains her from all the normal pleasures 
of youth, even his sufferings shall be made 
ridiculous. If Cathos and Madelon renounce 
the common language and customs of every- 
day life for the artificial jargon and manners 
of a romantic world, they shall be most hu- 
miliatingly deceived. In other words, Moliere 
is one with the pagan spirits of the Italian 
Renaissance in their full reliance on the good- 
ness of human nature and their disregard for 
the restraints of a religion which had under- 
taken to control every variety of human 
conduct. He too believes in the goodness of 
human nature, and goes on repeating in play 
after play: ^^ Be natural. Follow your normal 
impulses. That is the rule of life.'^ 



28 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

This injunction carries with it the corollary, 
'^Be sincere." It is only the man who dis- 
trusts or falsifies or despises nature who be- 
comes hypocritical. Consequently Moliere 
attacks every form of insincerity with relent- 
less vigor. Physicians who pretend to assist 
the human body, which needs no assistance, 
who repeat empty terms handed down from 
the ancients without the slightest knowledge 
of the organism for which they prescribe, 
who profess to administer wonder-working 
remedies when their only purpose is to line 
their pockets with gold — all these hypocrisies 
of medicine he ridicules with never diminish- 
ing zest. But hypocrisy is sometimes too 
much even for the inextinguishable gaiety 
of Moliere. Tartuffe, who forbids the inno- 
cent diversions of the young wife, who dries 
up the husband's sincere affection with the 
consuming breath of bigotry, who wishes to 
crush the tender love of the daughter 
and defeat the rightful expectations of the 
son, who would even seduce the wife of his 
benefactor, — this sinister figure is depicted, 
not in gay, but in somber colors, because he is 
the very antithesis of Moliere's injunction: 
'' Follow nature. Be sincere." 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 29 

Sincerity, however, may be carried too far. 
Alceste is passionately sincere, but he is 
ridiculous. One naturally asks why the man 
who embodies so many of MoHere's own 
characteristics, his hatred of affectation and 
pretense and conceit, his hatred of double- 
dealing and hypocrisy, whose devotion to 
sincerity reflects one of the very strongest 
devotions of Moliere's soul — why this man 
is nevertheless ridiculous. The answer is 
simple : because he forgets he is living in 
society, because he is unsocial. This Moliere 
never forgets. The man who follows instinct 
must do so with the abiding consciousness 
that he is living among men, that his conduct 
must be subject to the rule of conmion sense 
and sound judgment. Thus Moliere is after 
all vastly different from the pagan spirits 
of the Italian Renaissance. He believes in 
none of the immoderate enthusiasms of indi- 
viduahsm, in none of the strange eccentrici- 
ties of originality. Life must be subjected 
to order and reason. We must not demand 
of it the impossible, unless we wish to taste 
a bitterness like that of Alceste, almost as 
deep as the suffering of that Arnolphe who 



30 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

tried to defeat nature for his own personal 
ends. 

Thus it comes about that MoHere is some- 
thing more than a comedian presenting 
reaUstically the superficial and the local 
incongruities of life so as to make their 
contradiction with the norms of judgment 
prevalent in his community readily apparent. 
This typical Frenchman, with all the logical 
clearness, spirit of ridicule, and underlying 
seriousness of his race, this poet of the age 
of Louis XIV, when the society for which 
he wrote attained a greater unity than had 
ever before existed, not only becomes the 
greatest master of comedy in French drama 
by the inextinguishable gaiety of his genius, 
but also, by his profound insight into life 
and the sweet reasonableness of his attitude 
toward it, stands forth as one of the sig- 
nificant figures in the history of European 
literature. 



CHAPTER II 

RESTORATION COMEDY 

While Moliere and his compeers, La 
Fontaine and Boileau and Racine, were help- 
ing to produce that hterature which shines 
forth as the pecuHar pride of Frenchmen, there 
arose in England with the return of Charles 
II a literature of similar classical tendencies 
which Englishmen have consigned to a limbo 
of the half forgotten. Yet the period merits 
consideration, not only for the satire of Dry- 
den, which every one knows something about, 
but for the dimly remembered drama which 
filled the theaters for the four decades fol- 
lowing Charles II's return. It is of course 
true that nearly all the tragedy bears traces 
of Corneille and Racine from France and of 
Shakspere from among the Elizabethans, but 
a few of those tragedies have seldom or never 
been surpassed in all the succeeding two hun- 
dred years. The heroic play, moreover, sneer 
31 



32 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

as much as we may at its extravagant lan- 
guage and impossible characters, challenges 
our attention because it awoke the enthusi- 
asm of thousands of playgoers and absorbed 
much of the energy of the leading poet of the 
age. But the achievement of the Restora- 
tion was its comedy, an achievement which 
some critics have regarded as the most brilhant 
in English dramatic , literature. To study 
this comedy will be the purpose of this and 
the following chapters. 

Restoration comedy was not perfectly 
homogeneous. Though the different varieties 
will be seen later to have a great deal in 
common, lines of distinction can be drawn. 
There is first the old comedy of humors which 
had been developed by Ben Jonson, its plot 
consisting of a series of appropriate retribu- 
tions for the variations from a norm which 
were represented by the different characters. 
It awoke to a faint life in the early work of 
Dryden and was galvanized into strange con- 
tortions by Ben's faithful disciple, Thomas 
Shadwell. Then the Spanish comedy of 
intrigue, with its constant appeal to the at- 
tention by a brisk succession of incidents, a 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 33 

form which had in English been foreshadowed 
by the proUfic inventiveness of Fletcher, 
sprang for a time into promising popularity 
under the influence of King Charles, who was 
so fond of it that he suggested Spanish plots 
for some of the dramatists to imitate. Its 
vogue as a distinct species did not develop, 
but the intrigue plot, imported either directly 
from Spain or indirectly through the medium 
of Thomas Corneille or other French imitators 
of Calderon and the Spanish school, continued 
to form a large element in the comedy of the 
age. These types, however, are not what 
give to Restoration comedy its peculiar dis- 
tinction. The type which was then developed 
to its greatest brilliancy belongs to the species 
that Moliere cultivated — a comedy of man- 
ners which holds the mirror up to the follies 
and foibles of society without assuming the 
frown of a judge or uttering the jeer of a 
satirist. So conspicuously is this form the 
achievement of the period that Restoration 
comedy and comedy of manners have often 
been used as convertible terms. 

There had indeed been in English drama 
an approach to comedy of manners before 



34 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

this date. Truly notable is the famous 
comedy of humors already mentioned. It 
is rightly considered the invention of Ben 
Jonson, not only because Chapman's Hu- 
morous Day^s Mirth is hardly entitled to con- 
sideration in spite of the fact that in plot and 
treatment of character it is virtually an antici- 
pation of Every Man in his Humour, but also 
because the immense development of the 
type and its long vogue were due to Jonson 
entirely. It presented the follies and affecta- 
tions of contemporary life with a veracity that 
not even Wycherley excelled. Every play- 
goer was convinced of the reality of boastful 
Boabdil and of Sir Epicure Mammon. Even 
to-day we walk once more in old Saint Paul's 
with Fastidious Brisk, and laugh as heartily 
at the absurd mistakes of Zeal-of-the-Land 
Busy as if we ourselves were strolling through 
the side-shows of Bartholomew Fair. After 
Jonson left the stage, such plays as Cartwright's 
The Ordinary (1634), Marmion's The Anti- 
quary (1636), and Jasper Mayne's The 
City Match (1639) maintained the type down 
to the closing of the theaters. It is hardly 
necessary to point out that the whole school 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 35 

was not so much interested in picturing con- 
temporary manners as in drawing individ- 
ual eccentricities of character. The writers 
touched upon the f oUies of everyday or fashion- 
able life, but they satirized, not the social 
failing as such, but the personal deviation from 
a norm. They thus diverged from a true 
comedy of manners by centering their inter- 
est elsewhere than in the imitation of society. 
Nearer to the type under discussion are those 
plays which reveal a genuine interest in scenes 
of everyday life for themselves. Not to go 
back to Hick Scorner or Gammer Gurton's 
Needle, every one remembers The Two Angry 
Women of Abington and Lamb's hearty 
praise of it.^ The Merry Devil of Edmonton 
and The Merry JVives of Windsor also contain 
scenes from the village or rural circles of the 
time. A whole play of the type, its pictures 
of daily London life, tinged to be sure with 
a charming color of romance, is seen in 
Dekker's Shoemaker^s Holiday. A breath of 
satire inspires Eastward Hoe, and a gross real- 
ism approaching the moral indifference of 
the Restoration weighs down two companion 

1 Cf. Lamb, Works, iv. 426. 



36 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

pieces, Northward Hoe and Westward Hoe. 
In Middleton we find a dramatist devoting 
a good part of his time for a long period of 
years to the faithful reproduction of scenes 
from the actual London of his day, in a manner 
which was perhaps slightly influenced by the 
satiric intent of Jonson's humors and the 
romantic tendencies in plot of contemporary 
drama, but which in spirit approached very 
closely to the worldiness of Etheredge and 
Dry den. ^ Among the followers of Middleton, 
Field produced two comedies ^ which by the 
impudence of their amorous intrigue might 
have gained them a few representations at the 
court of Charles 11,^ but which show very 
clearly the influence of Jonson's gulls and 
roarers. The influence of Jonson is even 
larger in Brome's plays, in some of which 
the presentation of London life drops below 
Middleton or Field in the prosaic coarseness 
of the realism. 

Besides this type of comedy of manners, 

^ For a study of Middleton as a writer of comedy, 
cf. Fischer. 

2 A Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies. 

3 A Woman is a Weathercock was, in fact, revived at 
Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1667. Cf. Genest, i. 79. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 37 

which was written mainly for the butcher 
and the baker, there was another which had 
in view more or less the courtier and the inns- 
of-court man. This form was developed by 
John Fletcher, who infused into the realistic 
study of contemporary life a lightly ad- 
venturous tone that made all men soldiers 
of fortune, and who added to the charm of 
such study by the spiciness of his characters 
and the romantic daring of his plots.^ Even 
when the scene was London (as in Wit without 
Mo7iey or The Night Walker) this romantic 
element was prominent, and it generally be- 
came so controlling that the study of manners 
was disguised under a foreign garb and the 
English characters masqueraded as little 
French lawyers or Spanish curates. Massin- 
ger's Guardian bears witness to the popularity 
of this courtly type. Nearly the whole body 
of Shirley's comedy likewise depicted the 
higher grades of social life under one mask or 
another, and with a cleverness of plotting 
that was apparently also suggested by 
Fletcher. In this class of plays the basic ele- 
ment in a comedy of manners, the imitation of 

^ Cf. Hatcher, John Fletcher, p. 35. 



38 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

life in a fashionable circle more or less apart, 
is more prominent than in the preceding class, 
but in all the productions of the school the 
interest in reality is largely replaced by interest 
in incident and plot. With these qualifica- 
tions, however, it is true that even before 
the closing of the theaters comedies of man- 
ners directed either to the mass of citizens or 
to the throng of courtiers had already formed 
a large body of dramatic hterature. 

It should nevertheless not be forgotten 
that this body of literature differs in several 
respects from the Restoration comedy of 
which the following chapters are a study. 
Not much stress need be laid on the general 
use of verse by the Jacobean writers and the 
almost universal use of prose by Restoration 
playwrights.^ Comedy of manners in the 
earlier period tended to prose dialogue, many 
plays of Middleton and Brome having very 
few speeches in meter. But the dialogue of 
Middleton, in spite of the flashes of wit and 
satire, does not approach the brilliant repartee 
of Congreve, that realistic but poUshed imi- 

1 Crowne's Married Beau is the only exception out- 
side of tragi-comedy I know of. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 39 

tation of what the society of Charles II 's 
time regarded as the chief ornament of 
conversation. 

Not much need be said concerning the 
handhng of plot in the two periods. The 
school of Etheredge and Wycherley, in virtue 
of a closer approximation to the manners of 
its circle, is on the whole less extravagant 
in the violation of probabiHty than the fol- 
lowers of Middleton and Fletcher. Nor is 
the combining of two or more stories in a 
single piece a distinguishing feature of the 
school. English popular pla3rv^rights had 
from the beginning sought to hold the atten- 
tion of the audience by an abundance of 
action, even to the extent of joining plots that 
had no real connection. If many Restora- 
tion plays are a mere jumble of such unre- 
lated plots, they are simply a few degrees worse 
than some productions even by the masters 
of pre-Restoration comedy. In the attitude 
toward unities other than that of action a 
striking difference may be noted. The fre- 
quent change of scene and the long lapses of 
time among the Jacobeans are a notable 
feature of the stage and plot-management. 



40 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Only two of Fletcher's comedies/ for instance, 
come within a limit of twenty-four horn's, 
and many of them extend over a period of 
months or even a year. The constant change 
of place becomes at times almost kaleidoscopic, 
hurrying us hither and thither so as to give 
an impression of bustle and rush which any 
amount of action by itself would hardly 
produce. But the tendency through all Res- 
toration comedy is to keep the scene in the 
same locality and to compress the time as 
much as possible to the limits of a day and 
night. This was in part due to the introduc- 
tion of painted scenery.^ But we shall see 
later that French discussion of the unities, 
and especially the models followed by the 
dramatists, were a much stronger influence 
in lessening the number of scenes and short- 
ening the time of dramatic action. 

A more fundamental difference between 
the two periods is the selection and treatment 
of subject-matter. The Restoration was given 
over almost entirely to picturing the manners 
of fashionable life ; even when influenced by 

1 The Mad Lover and The Chances. 

2 On this introduction, cf. Downes, pp. xx. f., xxiv. f., 
20 f.; Wright, p. 412; Pepys, iii. 157 (June 13, 1663). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 41 

the comedy of intrigue it found its material 
largely in an imitation of the social customs 
of the times. The Jacobean comedy of man- 
ners in its different kinds down to the closing 
of the theaters was fundamentally either 
comedy of intrigue or comedy of humors, 
the transcript from contemporary life being 
introduced as of secondary importance and 
interest. Even such a realistic play as A 
Trick to Catch the Old One is essentially an 
intrigue-comedy, and A Mad World clearly 
employs Ben Jonson's plot-method. The 
truth is, the men who wrote comedies of 
London life had not yet reached the concep- 
tion which the leading Restoration play- 
wrights soon gained, that of centering the 
interest in a picture of contemporary man- 
ners. The poets like Middleton, who had 
a genuine interest in studying life realistically 
and satirizing various features of it, always 
felt it their first duty to keep up a busy action 
or to reveal new eccentricities of character. 
As a consequence of focusing its interest on 
social life. Restoration comedy placed much 
more of its action in interiors, within coffee- 
houses or boudoirs or reception halls, than in 



42 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

fields or streets or perhaps the undesignated 
rooms of a house. The development of 
painted scenery merely added vividness to 
this employment of local color. A second 
consequence was that an amorous intrigue 
formed the basis of nearly every Restoration 
plot, since such intrigues were held to be the 
chief recreation of the fashionable circles of 
the day. Jacobean comedy, on the contrary, 
in spite of its partial loss of the wholesome 
atmosphere of the Ehzabethan period, still 
moved in ways relatively more modest and 
wholesome. I am not unaware of the sev- 
eral pre-Restoration plays of London life 
that dealt with adultery and kindred vices. 
Any one who examines these latter will 
find in them an important difference from 
the attitude of Restoration writers. Leav- 
ing out of account a few anomalous pro- 
ductions like The Parson's Wedding, we find 
that such writers as Field and Brome and 
Shirley finally cleared those suspected of in- 
fidelity. Whoever speaks of their plays as 
rivaling the comedies of Charles II's court 
forgets this very material consideration. The 
Restoration audience delighted to see the 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 43 

young gallant succeed ; some pre-Restora- 
tion audiences apparently enjoyed risky situa- 
tions, but they at the same time demanded 
that virtue triumph in the end. 

The difference between the two ages in 
this matter is typical. The audiences of 
Jonson and the tribe of Ben had a healthy 
interest in frank realism ; the audiences of 
Wycherley and Dryden were characterized 
by a cynical indifference to moral considera- 
tions. Nor can it be urged that Jonson is 
also indifferent to moral considerations. To 
be sure, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair 
cannot be called strictly moral, — the knaves 
generally get the better of the pious. Yet 
the knavery is of no base or disgusting nature, 
so that we for the moment agree that the 
victims are too dull to deserve a better end. 
The Restoration not only laughed at witty 
rogues but applauded the crimes of youth and 
pleasure. Every restraint was felt as an im- 
pertinence, and they who most ingeniously 
and successfully evaded those restraints be- 
came the most delightful figures in the theater. 
The explanation of this state of affairs is not 
far to seek. Imagination was dead. Men 



44 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

were entirely absorbed in the hard or frivolous 
facts of life. Chivalric ideals no longer 
shaped their conduct, and they felt small 
desire to escape from fact into any poetic 
fairyland of the imagination. Self-sacrificing 
love and knightly honor might exist in some 
world of dreams, but for such men as Roches- 
ter and Buckingham dream-worlds had no 
existence even in the sounding couplets of 
an heroic play except as a subject for ridicule 
and immoderate laughter. He who would 
not be known for a fool had to look at the 
world of material existence with the clear 
eyes of common sense. Since virtue and 
chivalry no longer molded men's thoughts 
or influenced their actions, what could play- 
wrights do but fashion the scenes about them 
into a long succession of Relapses and Plain 
Dealers? The age for Rosalinds or even 
Sad Shepherdesses had given place to one of 
Royal Academies and the tenacious recogni- 
tion of fact. 

This formula fits the whole school remark- 
ably well. The different members, of course, 
had individuality. After reading them care- 
fully one comes to feel very marked personal 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 45 

characteristics. But the class traits are more 
numerous and striking than in the Jacobean 
period. No one would think of confusing 
Middleton with Fletcher or Massinger with 
Shirley. Equally obvious would be the simi- 
larities between even Wycherley and Congreve. 
In the days of the first Charles, to be sure, 
there were many hack writers whose manners 
are scarcely distinguishable, but the prevail- 
ing effort to invent novel situations shows 
that originality was yet prized. Men strove 
not to be like each other and recognized no 
conomon standards toward which all should 
tend who sought perfection. In the Restora- 
tion originahty found little place. It was 
an age of adaptors and imitators. Men 
no longer felt an impeUing individual in- 
spiration. The greatest writers borrowed in- 
cidents and characters for the most success- 
ful of their productions, and were following 
models in the most brilhant of their creations. 
They prided themselves on being members 
of a fashionable class, living their life apart 
from the body of the people. They recognized 
the integrity of a clique, and were guided con- 
stantly by the taste of their own small circle. 



46 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

The rivals of Jonson and Fletcher had to 
take into account a more various audience. 
Here, indeed, lies the secret of nearly all the 
differences we have noted between the two 
periods. 

The audience of the early Jacobean period 
is graphically described by Dekker in those 
satirical directions which he gave, in the 
chapter, "How a Gallant should behave him- 
self in a Playhouse," to those boorish fellows 
of the day who wished to pose as gentlemen 
of fashion : — 

Sithence then the place is so free in entertainment, 
allowing a stool as well to the farmer's son as to your 
templar ; that your stinkard has the self-same liberty 
to be there in his tobacco-fumes, which your sweet 
courtier hath ; and that your carman and tinker claim 
as strong a voice in their suffrage, and sit to give judge- 
ment on the play's life and death, as well as the proudest 
Momus among the tribe of critic : it is . fit that he, 
whom the most tailors' bills do make room for, when he 
comes, should not be basely, like a viol, cased up in 
a corner.^ 

It is clear enough, then, that in 1609 the play- 
house attracted well-nigh every element of 
the population, that the audience was truly 
1 Dekker, p. 49 f. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 47 

representative of the national life. This con- 
dition accounts for the undeniably English 
tone even of those plays where the scene was 
laid in foreign lands or the characters were 
taken from a restricted part of the population. 
He who wrote of kings and dukes made as 
broad an appeal as he who presented only 
shoemakers and apprentices. The taste of 
the city and the taste of the court, though 
not identical, were by no means antagonistic 
or mutually exclusive. 

Before the reign was out James had con- 
trived by his theories concerning divine right 
and ecclesiastical authority to stir up more 
than ever the opposition of the Puritan party. ^ 
Its time-honored hatred of the theater was 
fed also by the magnificent spectacles which 
Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones were creating 
under royal favor. The gradual drawing 
away of the mass of the people from the 
playhouse found ample expression in the next 
reign in the Histrio-niasHx of WilUam Prynne. 
This ^valiant author declared with some 
bitterness: ^Hhat many, that any gracious, 
godly, growen, faithfull Christians, who are 
1 For this whole subject, cf. Thompson. 



48 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

thorowly instructed in the wayes of godli- 
nesse, or in the noxious qualities of Playes, 
doe constantly, doe frequently resort to Play- 
houses, to Stage-playes, (especially out of 
a loue or liking unto Playes themselves) I 
utterly denj^" ^ He further asseverated 
'Hhat they who resort to Playes and Play- 
houses, have not so much as the least Symp- 
tomes of any Christianity in them ; that they 
are worse then men, then beasts, then Devils." ^ 
The over-zealous barrister had to admit, how- 
ever, ''that perchance some few exorbitant, 
scandalous histrionicall, (but farre from good) 
Divines" and ''some puny new-converted 
Christian Novices " " may sometimes visit 
Theaters." ^ The proportion of good people 
who did so was much larger than he was will- 
ing to concede. KiUigrew, says Pepys, "tells 
me plainly that the City audience was [then] 
as good as the Court." - This evidently 
means that the respectable part of the city, 
not merely the idle and frivolous or the low 
and brutal, formed as large a part of the au- 
dience as the hangers-on at court. He did 

1 Prynne, p. 151. ^ jud., p. 427. ^ lUd., p. 150. 

2 Pepys, vi. 163 (Feb. 12, 1666-7). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 49 

not have in mind the Fortune and the Red 
Bull, which were ^^ mostly frequented by 
citizens and the meaner sort of people/' ^ 
but the ^'private houses/' the Blackfriars, 
Cockpit, and Salisbury Court, which ^'had 
pits for the gentry." ^ For Wright, speaking 
evidently of the reign of Charles I, declares 
that very good people then thought "a play 
an innocent diversion for an idle hour or 
two." ^ We must therefore conclude that 
down to the close of the elder drama the writers 
took into account various elements of the 
population, that the city itself continued to 
furnish whole audiences, and that the taste 
of the court was tempered by that of the 
middle classes. The success of a play still 
depended upon the breadth of its appeal. 

There can of course be no doubt that in the 
England of the fourth decade the audiences 
were less representative of the whole nation 
than those described by Dekker at the close 
of the first decade. The Memoirs of Colonel 
Hutchinson for the later period reveal how 
wide had become the separation between the 
court and the serious, self-respecting element 

1 Wright, p. 407. ^ /^^-^^.^ p. 408. 3 /^^^^^^ p, 497. 

E 



50 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

of the population.^ The drama itself fur- 
nishes abundant evidence. The later plays 
of London life, unlike those produced in the 
early years of the century, which were leveled 
more or less at the taste of shoemakers and 
apprentices without losing the strong interest 
of all grades of society from prince to pauper, 
were in several cases apparently written for 
the frequenters of the tavern and the gaming 
table. Such, I imagine, were a great many of 
the comedies presented at the Fortune or the 
Red Bull.^ Scarcely more representative of 
the body of the people was the great mass of 
drama, beginning with Fletcher, which sought 
primarily to interest the languid courtiers 
who had developed a somewhat fastidious 
taste through the performance of masks and 
pageants. The taste even of the average 
playgoer from among the gentr}^ was headed 
in Charles I's time toward the taste of the 
Restoration ; he delighted in the gulling of 
a would-be gallant from the country or the 
humiliation of a puritanic citizen. But it 
is important to remember in this connection 

1 Cf. Hutchinson, i. passim, especially p. 114 f. 

2 Cf. Fleay, pp. 358 fP., 363. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 51 

that he was still far from demanding what 
the playgoer of Charles II's time demanded. 
Fletcher had continued to draw common 
characters sympathetically/ and his plays 
were still popular. Shirley, to be sure, was 
more distinctly a court poet, in one piece 
entering into collaboration with the King. 
His plays were of course presented at the 
private houses. He, however, is an extreme 
illustration of the tendency. Massinger 
surely wrote for men as sturdily English as 
any who applauded Middleton or Dekker, 
yet his pieces were presented at those same 
Drury Lane or Blackfriars audiences. Be- 
sides, the traditions of the great period were 
ever before the poets of the later decades, as 
one can see in the most courtly of them 
all, Shirley himself. The atmosphere of the 
clique, the consciousness of appealing to a 
narrow circle only, was thus prevented from 
becoming oppressive. The theater was no 
longer a truly national pastime, it is true, 
but the drama as a whole retained in various 
degrees an unmistakably English tone and 
a corresponding breadth of appeal. 
1 E.g., Gillian in The Chances, Syphaxin The Mad Lover. 



52 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

The Restoration audiences were more ho- 
mogeneous. The manager KilHgrew told 
Pepys the City had almost ceased to appear 
at the theater.^ Wright at a later date (1699) 
corroborates him with the statement that 
^Hhe playhouses are so extremely pestered 
with vizard-masks and their trade (occasion- 
ing continual quarrels and abuses), that many 
of the more civilized part of the town are un- 
easy in the company, and shun the theatre 
as they would a house of scandal." ^ A 
single glance from the stage will show how 
great the change was from pre-Restoration 
times. ^ We see the upper gallery chiefly 
occupied by the footmen ^ of the lords and 
ladies who sit in the pit (or parquet) and the 
boxes below. Women of loose character 
throng into the middle gallery ^ and crowd 
even into the prominent places in the pit 
among the ladies of quality. The latter 
appear also in the circle of boxes which runs 

1 Cf. Pepys, vi. 163 (Feb. 12, 1666-7). 

2 Op. cit., p. 407. 

3 Cf. Lowe, Thomas Betterton, chap. iii. 

4 Cf. Dryden, Works, x. 399 f. 

^ Ibid., p. 399; Congreve, epilogue to The Double 
Dealer. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 53 

around the pit under the galleries. The chief 
resort of the wits and all the leaders of the 
day is the pit itself. Thither they repair, 
often as early as shortly after noon, the house 
sometimes being filled by one o' clock. ^ The 
elegant idlers pass the time pleasantly enough 
chaffing the orange girls ^ or conversing with 
the vizard-masks, not stopping when the play 
begins if the damsel prove witty enough, even 
though, as in Pepys's case, other spectators 
by that means lose the pleasure of the play 
wholly. ^ Yet it was the opinion of such 
beaux in feather and flaxen periwig that de- 
termined the success or failure of the comedy. 
They remained after the performance to dis- 
cuss its merits and ''decree the poor play^s 
fate,^^ ^ for, their judgment once known, ''all 
the town pronounces it their thought." ^ 
Hence the fops and wits were the determin- 
ing element in these Restoration audiences ; 
it was for them the playwrights wrote, and 
it was by them the humbler members of the 

' Cf. Pepys, viii. 223 (Feb. 25, 1668-9). 
^ Cf. Vincent, Young Gallant's Academy (in Dekker, 
p. 105). 

3Cf. Pepys, vi. 176 (Feb. 18, 1666-7). 

^ Dryden, Works, iii. 97. ^ Ihid. 



54 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

audience were convinced. For the ''citizens, 
'prentices, and others" who at one perform- 
ance seemed to Pepys "a mighty company '^ 
in the pit and a sign of ''the vanity and 
prodigaHty of the age," ^ were certainly the 
admirers and would-be imitators of the rakes 
of the court whose escapades had given the 
tone to society. 

Nothing can be more striking than the unity 
of these audiences, than the absorbing interest 
manifested in the sayings and doings of the 
leaders. The office clerks whom Pepys men- 
tions, ^ we must believe, took as vivid an in- 
terest in the King's mistress and were as 
much pleased to fill their eyes with her as the 
worthy Clerk of the Acts himself,^ and they 
were possibly as much troubled at a later per- 
formance to see Lady Castlemain look de- 
jectedly and slighted by people already.^ 
Nor can their dehght at the coarse repartee 
of those notorious actresses, Nell Gwyn and 
Beck Marshall, have been less than his.^ 

1 Pepys, vii. 244 f. (Jan. 1, 1667-8). 

2 Cf. Ibid., i. 307 (Jan. 19, 1660-1). 

3 Cf. Ibid., ii. 64 (July 23, 1661). 

4 Cf. Ibid., p. 225 (May 21, 1662). 
s Cf. Ibid., vii. 161 (Oct. 26, 1667). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 55 

It is possible that some of the citizens who 
frequented the playhouse had their hair pulled 
by a vizard-mask less distinguished than Mrs. 
Knipp,^ and thus began in imitation of 
Rochester or Buckingham an affair which oc- 
casioned more than one quarrel with their 
wives.2 

For it should be remembered that the leaders 
of these audiences led outside the theater 
impudently dissolute lives. It would be a 
grievous error to repeat the frequent assump- 
tion that the whole body of society was 
permeated by the moral rottenness of the 
court. The more idle and frivolous or weak- 
kneed and self-indulgent gave way to the 
license of the times, but the great mass of 
the sturdy, self-respecting middle class that 
had supported the Puritan movement of the 
preceding decades did not suddenly forsake 
their bourgeois virtues and strong moral 
prepossessions. They simply held themselves 
in retirement and kept away from the theater 
altogether. Moreover, even the many vacillat- 
ing spirits who fell in with the playgoers and 

1 Cf. Pepys, p. 62 (Aug. 12, 1667). 

2 Cf. Ibid., viii. 233 (May 4, 1668). 



56 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

were caught in the tidal wave of reaction from 
the Puritan regime boasted of a defiance they 
were far from putting into practice. After 
these reservations are made, the picture of 
society is one of the darkest in the modern 
history of England, especially in the first 
decade, when the reaction was most violent, 
but also, in a diminishing degree, down to the 
pubUcation of Colher's Short View, when the 
middle-class ideals once more gained control. 
We know from various sources that the 
gallants who directed courtly taste in theatri- 
cal matters spent a good part of their time in 
seeking diversions, in running from theater 
to theater or sauntering through Hyde Park 
till they found some interesting damsel or till 
all the fine ladies had taken their leave ; they 
visited the crowded shops of the New Ex- 
change, took journeys to Epsom Wells, or 
conducted themselves with such shameless 
impudence toward women that it troubled 
Pepys ^'to see the confidence and vice of the 
age." ^ The theater itself was one of the chief 
centers of such immorality ; the career of Nell 
Gwyn was typical of the stage life of the 
1 Pepys, viii. 67 (July 27, 1668). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 57 

period/ So general was this looseness of life at 
the beginning of the period that King Charles, 
when he wished to convene ParUament on 
short notice, sent to the theaters and houses of 
ill-fame to summon the members to meeting. ^ 
How could it be otherwise when Charles him- 
self set the example,^ ^'squandering on his 
mistresses the £70,000 voted by the House 
for a monument to his father"?^ 

With such audiences dominated by such 
leaders the playwrights could not do otherwise 
than produce a drama far different from the 
unmistakably Enghsh drama of pre-Restora- 
tion times. Instead of appealing to men 
from virtually every class in the nation, they 
depended for success on the suffrage of a 
narrow court circle led by the most dissolute 
rakes of the day. The tendency of comedy 
to develop new characteristics in this new 
social milieu was strengthened by the pre- 
vailing French taste of the court circle.^ 

^ Cf. Cunningham, Story of Nell Gwyn; Pepys, vii. 
19 (July 13, 1667). 

2 Cf. Pepys, vi. 88 (Dee. 8, 1666). 

3Cf. Ihid., vii. 259 f. (Jan. 11, 1667-8). 

^ Cunningham, p. 104. 

^ For this whole subject, cf. Charlanne. 



58 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

The royalists who had followed Queen Hen- 
riette to Saint Germain or who later fled to 
the Continent before Cromwell, enjoyed for 
many years the balls, concerts, promenades, 
and various fetes provided for their enter- 
tainment at Fontainebleau or in the vicinity 
of the Louvre. Although these cavaliers 
were very glad to return to England for the 
favors which they felt Charles II would 
shower upon them, they returned with a 
genuine liking for the French manner of hving 
and thinking. They were still haunted by 
the charms of the superior civihzation of 
France. Fashions in dress during the whole 
Restoration period were adapted more or 
less from French styles, — hats and peri- 
wigs, gloves, mirrors, perfumes, ribbons, and 
rings were brought from Paris with lace, 
embroidery, and fans. Even carpets, coaches, 
and clocks had to be imported with the wines 
from Bordeaux and the cheese from Calais. 
In short, French taste was the mark of good 
society. He who could not converse in 
French lacked one of the essentials of good 
breeding. Nothing could be more natural 
than this revolt among men who held in de- 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 59 

testation the severe simplicity of the Puritan 
regime and wished to get as far away as possible 
from the ascetic ideal of dress and conduct. 

This spirit of reaction, furthered by a 
genuine liking for French taste, was in the 
drama tempered by the force of no strong 
national literary tradition. The cavahers 
themselves knew almost nothing of the glories 
of the elder drama, and the few writers like 
KilUgrew and Davenant who survived from 
pre-Restoration times were totally incapable 
of repeating the Jacobean achievements or 
even of continuing the work of Massinger 
or Shirley. During the first ten years, to be 
sure, the revivals of plays by the school of 
Fletcher and Jonson were constant, but the 
courtiers felt like Pepys that these things 
were hardly to their taste. The King him- 
self, who was especially interested in the 
theater, at one time commanding Lacy to act 
in the place of Clun ^ and frequently ending 
disputes in the theatrical companies by his 
command or decision, ^ at once took upon him- 
self the substitution of new models. To Tuke 

. 1 Cf. Pepys, iii. 108 (May 8, 1663). 
2 Cf . Cibber, i. 89. 



60 TPIE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

he suggested a Spanish plot for The Adventures 
of Five Hours. The author, who remarks 
that his majesty's ''judgment is no more to 
be doubted than his commands to be dis- 
obeyed," ^ declares that the Spanish are the 
happiest nation in the world '4n the force and 
delicacy of their inventions." ^ The King's 
interest in the Spanish drama did not wane, 
for not long before his death he pointed out 
to Crowne No Pued Esser for the intrigue of 
Sir Courtly Nice,^ But it was not the models 
from Spain which were to determine the trend 
of Restoration comedy. That trend was to 
be determined by two young writers who had 
spent their youth and formed their taste in 
France. They were to develop a new species 
of English comedy by introducing Moliere 
to English audiences. 

1 Dodsley, xv. 194. 

2 Ihid. 

3 Cf . Crowne, Works, iii. 254, 245 ff. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BEGINNING OF THE INFLUENCE 

The two men who introduced the influence 
of Mohere into Restoration comedy were Sir 
George Etheredge and WiUiam Wycherley. 
Etheredge was one of the most elegant wits 
of his time. Not very much is positively 
known of his life, but it is certain that he was 
one of the gay band of cavaHers who drank 
in the delights of Saint Germain with Prince 
Charles. How deep a draught he took may 
be inferred from his plays, which show that 
he knew all the fashionable shops and was 
familiar with the peculiar customs and usual 
topics of conversation in the beau monde} 
The Parisian experience must have been en- 
joyed by this indolent pleasure-lover, who 
nevertheless took a keen interest in observing 
the amusements of others. On his return to 

1 E.g., cf. Love in a Tub, iii. 4 (p. 51 ff.); *5z> Fopling 
Flutter, iii. 2 (p. 296 ff.); Ibid., iv. 2 (p. 338 f.). 
61 



62 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

London some three years after the Restora- 
tion/ he joined the circle of men about town, 
spent this afternoon in the coffee-house, 
sauntered that evening about the paths of 
Mulberry Garden, sat the next day in the pit 
at Drury Lane to hear Mohun in The Humor- 
ous Lieutenant or at Lincoln's Inn Fields to 
witness Dryden's The Wild Gallant. But 
these plays must have seemed to him lacking 
in vitahty — they were not close enough to 
his ordinary life to arouse much enthusiasm. 
"I can do better than that myself,'' he must 
have thought to himself, remembering the 
triumph Moliere had achieved in Les Pre- 
cieuses Ridicules by transcribing a Parisian 
fad. He accordingly set to work and in 1664 
produced Love in a Tuh.^ 

Such I conjecture to have been the origin 
of Etheredge's first comedy. He certainly 
had been profoundly impressed by Les Pre- 
cieuses Ridicules, as we shall find in Sir Fop- 
ling Flutter. But at the moment he saw 
nothing in London corresponding to the French 

^ Cf. Meindl, p. 9 f. ; Gosse, Seventeenth Century 
Studies, p. 235. 

2 On the date of production, cf. Pepys, iv. 304 (Jan. 
4, 1664-5). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 63 

farce, so that he presented a picture of the 
roystering circle in which he moved and filled 
out the play with a serious action in heroic 
couplet. One thread of the comic plot, the 
attempts of Palmer and Wheedle to swindle 
Cully, is an intrigue of Jonsonian comedy 
placed in a Restoration setting. But the 
central feature of the plot, the courting of 
the widow by Sir Frederick and of her maid 
by his valet Dufoy, harks back to MoHere. 
The suggestion for the action was found in 
the fortunes of Eraste and his servant Gros- 
Rene in Le Depit Amoureux, but no more 
than the suggestion. The idea of introducing 
a subplot dealing with maid and servant he 
borrowed, but the characters and incidents 
were all taken directly from his own experi- 
ence of London life. Dufoy is one of the 
French valets whom the cavaliers had brought 
across the Channel on their return to England. 
Sir Frederick is a young blood whose amuse- 
ments are waging a bloody war with the con- 
stable, ^^ committing a general massacre on 
the glass- windows," and knocking at a lady's 
lodgings at two o'clock in the morning as if he 
were upon a matter of Hfe and death. It was 



64 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

this reproduction of the world of gallants and 
dandies which made the play more success- 
ful than any Davenant's company had pro- 
duced, bringing to the actors a thousand 
pounds in the course of a month.^ 

In this appeal to recognition, not in the 
suggestion for a part of the plot, lies the real 
influence of Moliere in the play. How im- 
portant the influence was for the period may 
be surmised from the statement that Love in 
a Tub was the first Restoration comedy to 
center the interest in the recognition of one's 
acquaintances and pastimes in the figures 
and scenes on the stage. The Wild Gallant 
had indeed contained a dim reflection of the 
yet unformed society of the realm, but the 
persons were worked up as humors supposed 
to be interesting for their eccentricities, and 
the customs were described in a purely in- 
cidental fashion. Etheredge did the new 
thing of presenting typical figures which 
were interesting because they were tj^^ical. 
His attitude toward the life he copied was 
thus like Moliere's detachment, but he went 
beyond Moliere to a position of almost com- 
1 Cf. Dowries, p. 25. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 65 

plete indifference. He not only refused to 
take sides with or against his characters, but 
he did not hold them up to any standard of 
sound sense or social welfare. 

The immense success of his first production 
made Etheredge a favorite with the wits of 
the courtly circle. This is probably one of 
the reasons why he worked out his second 
play more carefully. She Would if She 
Could (1668) at any rate marks an advance 
in dramatic construction, for the plot is un- 
mixed with tragedy and the threads are 
skilfully interwoven. It also marks an ex- 
clusiveness in the point of view which may 
be traced in part to Etheredge's greater inti- 
macy with the leaders of fashion. The main 
plot, in all likehhood suggested by a fre- 
quent incident of London life, is the pursuit of 
a town gallant by a country lady aping town 
manners. The idea implies not only a change 
in the dramatist, but a development of unity 
in the worldly society, a consciousness of its 
own ideals and of its separateness, which can- 
not be paralleled in earlier Restoration plays. 
Lady Cockwood was ridiculous because she 
was in a vague sense an interloper, one who 



66 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

pestered the dandies of the heau monde. The 
two country knights were also laughed at, 
but with less of amused superiority, because 
they were in a way kindred spirits with the 
courtly men-about-town. The two girls, 
Ariana and Gatty, were welcomed with de- 
light, for they possessed the wit which the 
fashionable circle most prized. Class con- 
sciousness, with the inevitable interest in its 
own manners and amusements, was clearly 
a formative influence in the play. But this 
spirit was everywhere tempered by the in- 
difference which belonged to Etheredge's 
native attitude toward life and which he had 
been shown how to apply to the comic treat- 
ment of mankind by the early success of 
Mohere. 

Without going on to consider here Ether- 
edge's further development in Sir FopUng 
Flutter (1676), we may note how different 
Etheredge is from the Frenchman whose 
general attitude he followed. I do not refer 
to the unconcern for moral and social con- 
siderations which was mentioned above, nor 
to the lightness of touch with which he handles 
comic scenes. In the last respect he is much 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 67 

like Moliere. The scenes of She Would if She 
Could in which Ariana and Gatty appear are 
sprightly and graceful, and the childish con- 
ceit and affected fine manners of Sir Fopling 
in his last play are presented with a gaiety 
that makes the figure one of the most enter- 
taining in Restoration drama. But with 
all this ease and liveliness, Etheredge's most 
animated scenes take a turn that is decidedly 
unlike Moliere' s. The Englishman delights 
in repartee and wit ; he is not so much amused 
by the incongruities of life as by the sudden 
juxtaposition of contradictory ideas. More- 
over, he looks at life with a strange insensi- 
bility. Moliere laughed at the ridiculous, 
but his laughter was not devoid of sympathy. 
Etheredge, on the contrary, asks us to laugh 
at the pranks of a roysterer who at midnight 
arouses with bells and fiddles and boisterous 
songs the woman he is courting, or at an 
elegant gallant who, in order to fall into the 
arms of an heiress, discards the mistress he 
has at length won with exceeding trouble. 
It is indeed a heartless world he presents, and 
he laughs with an entire acquiescence in its 
point of view. He is thus far from sharing 



68 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Moliere's attitude that the comic consists 
in whatever is incongruous with the reason- 
able demands of society. It should never- 
theless be remembered that he approached 
Moliere in lightness of touch and gaiety of 
spirit, and also that he owed to Moliere the 
conception that manners are interesting on 
the stage in themselves without being re- 
modeled into humors or obscured by the 
incidents of a busy plot. 

The influence of Moliere on Etheredge 
resulted from the Englishman's witnessing a 
few of the French pieces on the stage. His 
influence on Wycherleyi. was due to a close 
study of the printed works of the Frenchman. 
It will be recalled that Wycherley spent the 
most impressionable years of his youth, from 
fifteen to twenty, in western France in the 
circle of Madame de Montausier, more famous 
under her maiden name of Julie de Ram- 
bouillet.^ It was the cult of preciosity with 
which this circle was associated that Moliere 
attacked in Les Precieuses Ridicules in 1659, 
the last year of Wycherley's stay in France. 

1 Cf . Dennis, Some Remarkable Passages, p. 114 f.; 
Spence, p. 13. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 69 

The tremendous sensation which the satire 
produced on the banks of the Seine must 
have been reechoed on the banks of the 
Charente, so that the young EngHshman 
could hardly forget this new kind of comedy. 
It is indeed certain that he followed Moliere's 
career eagerly after his return to England and 
made use of the French comedies in all his own 
work. This study of the printed plays is evi- 
dent from the numerous borrowings in his first 
comedy, Love in a Wood (1671).^ More im- 
portant, however, is the adoption of Moliere's 
method that appears in the close transcript 
from contemporary social life. Wycherley's 
stay in France had enabled him to appre- 
ciate how faithfully Moliere had copied the 
widespread affectation of preciosity and how 
essentially new such method of copying was 
in French drama. The satiric bent of his 
own nature took keen pleasure in the ridicule 
Moliere poured out on the fad, but the ve- 
hemence of his feelings kept him from ever 
being able to assume the same attitude 

1 On the date of production of all Wycherley's plays, 
of. Klette, p. 30 £f.; Quaas, p. 50 ff.; the notices in 
the Mermaid edition ; and Aitken's article in the 
Dictionary of National Biography. 



70 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

of detachment toward the affectations he 
might himself satirize. The consequence was 
that in scenes from a tavern or St. James's 
Park or the rooms of a procuress, all done to 
the life, were placed an alderman made 
highly ridiculous for the delectation of the 
aristocratic courtiers and a pretender to wit 
so silly as to excite unbounded merriment 
among the worshipers of brilliant conceits. 
Moreover, the dialogue was filled with witty 
observations in which the author expressed 
his individual scorn of some features of the 
London life he was copying. This was not 
only unlike Etheredge's careless indifference, 
but entirely foreign to Moliere's philosophic 
aloofness. 

It would be interesting to determine whether 
Wycherley began his imitation of Moliere 
independently or as a result of Etheredge's 
innovation. According to Wycherley's own 
account, he composed Love in a Wood even 
before the Restoration. It is impossible to 
accept the declaration, not only because the 
borrowings from Moliere are from plays pro- 
duced after the Restoration, but because the 
society reflected in the comedy is already 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 71 

pretty well developed. In the prologue the 
author declares he 

is come to suffer here to-day 
For counterfeiting (as you judge) a play.* 

This has generally been considered a reference 
to Sedley's Mulberry Garden, a tragi-comedy 
produced in 1668. The comic plot is of the 
intrigue variety, but the influence of Love in a 
Tub, and possibly of She Would if She Could, 
appears in several passages where the life 
of the time is pretty fully transcribed. Still, 
Wycherley's play is in no sense a counterfeit 
of Sedley's or of either of Etheredge's, and he 
certainly could not be referring to ttie French 
plays from which he borrowed. Sedley had 
centered the interest in the windings of the 
plot, but Wycherley interested his audience 
in figures that were easily recognized as typical 
in spite of their farcical coloring and in scenes 
that were obviously copied from the London 
of the day. He was thus doing the same 
thing as Etheredge. All the antecedent prob- 
abilities therefore favor the supposition that 
he was stimulated to imitate Moliere by 
1 Wycherley, p. 9. 



72 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Etheredge's example, but the original manner 
of his imitation renders it impossible to de- 
clare with certainty that he was not inde- 
pendent of that example. 

Possibly the most familiar incident ^ in 
Wycherley's life arose from the success of his 
first play. The Duchess of Cleveland, who 
as Lady Castlemain and the King's mistress 
had excited the interest of Pepys, leaned half- 
way out of her coach one day to accost the 
dramatist as he was passing. He was enough 
of a gallant to walk immediately into her favor 
and into the high esteem of her circle, so much 
so that the King himself manifested a re- 
markable interest in Wycherley's welfare. 
There may be a trace of royal influence in 
his basing his second play, The Gentleman 
Dancing Master (1671), on a Spanish original. 
The comedy shows that the beaux and wits 
had developed the spirit of a clique, definite 
and self-conscious, and at the same time were 
liberating themselves from foreign influence, 
so that the witless Paris was laughed at for 
his adoption of extravagant French costume 

1 Cf . Dennis, Some Remarkable Passages, p. 115 ff.; 
Spenee, p. 13. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 73 

as much as the austerely grave Don Diego 
for his assumption of Spanish manners. The 
ideals of the set were even more clearly de- 
fined in The Country Wife (1673), where the 
effort of an old rake to keep a country girl 
all to himself after marriage was found highly 
ridiculous, the reiterated pretensions of fine 
ladies to strict virtue were discovered to be 
nothing but a cloak for the more secure en- 
joyment of forbidden fruit, and the fatuous 
conceit of a would-be wit was humiliated to 
bless the true wit of the play with the only 
good woman among the dramatis personce. 
Without considering The Plain Dealer^ 
which was produced the next year, we can 
see clearly that the explanation of Wycherley's 
popularity is to be found in the faithfulness 
with which he reflected the attitude of the 
worldly society which controlled the taste 
of the play-going public. He had learned 
well the lesson of Les Precieuses Ridicules. 
He had learned how to employ his keen 
native sense of the comic so as to appeal 
most directl}^ to the spirit of the clique which 
already characterized the Restoration. How 
genuine his feeling for comedy was may be 



74 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

seen in The Gentleman Dancing Master, where 
the determination of Don Diego never to 
admit that he has been fooled and the in- 
sistence of Mrs. Caution on her superior pene- 
tration furnish as laughable scenes as the 
period has to show. But it is likewise to be 
noted that Wycherley added a special appeal 
to his audience by giving to the man a 
ridiculous affectation of Spanish gravity and 
to the woman a suspicion of Puritan prin- 
ciples. He had learned his lesson well, as I 
have said, but no one who knows anything 
of psychology will expect that he reproduced 
Moliere's method and attitude unaltered. 
He was an Englishman, and a very inde- 
pendent Englishman at that. The fine sense 
of proportion which is at the bottom of 
Moliere's comedy could never be assimilated 
by a man of such a vigorous nature as Wych- 
erley's. The violence of The Plain Dealer 
was merely a development from the exagger- 
ation to w^hich he resorted in Love in a Wood 
to render his farcical figures ridiculous. He 
had, moreover, a love of satire essentially 
different from the sympathy which tinges 
MoHere's aloofness. He dehghted to fill 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 75 

whole pages with keen and flashing wit di- 
rected at the various customs and hypocrisies 
of the day. But in this, too, he was reflect- 
ing his time. He was in reahty as much a 
man of his age as Mohere was of the age of 
Louis XIV. 

These few plays produced between 1664 
and 1674 brought into the Restoration theater 
the new comedy of manners. Love in a Tub 
was frequently revived.^ At the first per- 
formance of She Would if She Could sl thou- 
sand people were turned away, though its 
promise of popularity was largely defeated 
by poor acting.^ Love in a Wood was a great 
success.^ The Gentleman Dancing Master did 
not take,'^ but it was followed by The Country 
Wife, one of the most influential comedies 
of the whole period, and by The Plain Dealer, 
which elicited high praise from the Laureate 
himself.'^ The nature of the impression made 
by these plays coming out in rapid succession 

1 Cf. Downes, p. 32 ; Etheredge, p. x, note 2. 
2Cf. Pepys, vii. 287 (Feb. 6, 1667-8); Shadwell, 
Works, i. 118 f. 

3 Cf . dedication, and Dennis, Some Remarkable 
Passages, p. 115. 

4 Cf. Downes, p. 32. 

^ Cf. Dryden, Works, v. 115. 



76 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

is plainly seen in contemporary comedy. 
Shadwell's Sullen Lovers (1668) had been a 
close imitation of Jonson's comedy of humors, 
but The Miser (1671) reflected the new 
development with unmistakable clearness. 
Crowne's Country Wit (1675) carried on the 
type. The playwrights had learned to attain 
success by appealing to the sense of recogni- 
tion, either in its purity, or with only the 
shghtest tinge of satire, or with the admixture 
of satire made acrid with the strongest gall. 
Even more noteworthy was the influence 
on Dryden. He was not dowered with a true 
sense of comedy, more than once expressing 
his contempt for it,^ but he had an unerring 
sense for changes in pubhc taste. During 
the first ten years, when Fletcher and Jonson 
were constantly revived and when the King's 
fondness for Spanish drama was well known, 
he produced humors and comedies of intrigue. 
The success of Etheredge and Wycherley 
opened his eyes to a new side of the Mohere 
from whom he had been borrowing. His 
lack of familiarity with French conditions 
had prevented him from noting the essential 

1 Cf. e.g., Dryden, Works, iii. 240. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 77 

realism of Moliere's satiric pictures. Nat- 
urally, Sir Martin Mar-All (1667), founded 
on UEtourdi, was a comedy of intrigue. But 
it was not so natural to introduce into An 
Evening^ s Love (1668), also a comedy of in- 
trigue, the role of Aurelia, a Jonsonian humor 
suggested by Moliere's several paintings of 
preciosity. Marriage a la Mode (1672) is a 
different kind of piece with different figures. 
Recognizing the validity of the ridicule of 
heroic plays in The Rehearsal (1671), Dry den 
apparently considered it advisable to compress 
a plot originally intended to fill five acts with 
heroic incident and rant. The half thus left 
vacant he filled with a satiric picture of Res- 
toration life, in which the influence of Moliere, 
She Would if She Could and Love in a Wood, 
is unmistakable. For the first time in Dryden 
the interest is centered in the social criticism, 
even though the scenes contain as many signs 
of literary reminiscence as of personal ob- 
servation. Besides, Melantha is not a humor 
of the kind he had been presenting, interest- 
ing chiefly as an oddity, a curiosity. She 
is the reproduction, in much of Moliere's 
spirit, of female foppery and an extravagance 



78 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

in the emploj^ment of French phrases which 
was common at the time, and she is interesting 
precisely because she is such a copy or re- 
production. Of course, Dryden's dramatic 
method had been formed in the ten years 
preceding the date of this piece, and he never 
gained a genuine interest in the realistic 
satire of society. By assiduous flattery he 
had entered the circle of wits and beaux, but 
his inspiration came, not from their society, 
but from literary sources. He therefore did 
not fully understand the secret of Moliere's 
success, but in all his later use of bor- 
rowed material he did keep the French 
master before his eyes. 

Thus at the end of the first decade of the 
Restoration the comedy of manners developed 
in France by Moliere was transplanted to 
England, where it grew as best it could in 
the thin soil and murky atmosphere of King 
Charles's court. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ATTITUDE TOWARD MOLIERE 

The influence of Moliere, unmistakably 
present in Love in a Tub in 1664, really ef- 
fected a change in Restoration drama with 
the series of plays beginning in 1668, when the 
society necessary for any comedy of manners 
had developed class-consciousness and unity 
of feeling. But Etheredge was not the first 
man to adapt material from Moliere. It was 
Davenant who made the first borrowing, in 
The Playhouse to he Let (1663),^ which is in 
reality a series of extended dramatic sketches. 
In the first act the audience learns that some 
players must let their theater for the vacation 
and that four companies are to present sketches 
in competition for the privilege of renting the 
house. These four separate pieces fill the 
remaining four acts of the play. The second 
company to appear, which is supposed to 

1 On the date of production, cf. Davenant, iv. 3. 
79 



80 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

have lately come over from France, very 
naturally presents Sganarelle ou le Cocu 
Imaginaire, translated into broken English 
to render the supposition more convincing. 
Davenant follows the original closely, retain- 
ing a good deal of the animation. The only 
changes in the action, due to the omission of 
three scenes and parts of the long speeches, are 
that the servant of the young lover does not 
appear, that the man who imagines his wife has 
become unfaithful does not consult her relatives, 
and that the wife and young lover remain on 
the porch instead of entering the house. The 
original being comedy of intrigue, this trans- 
lation does not belong to Restoration comedy 
of manners, but it is interesting to note how 
early Mohere was laid under contribution to 
provide gaiety for London audiences. 

It is significant that the first borrowing 
was this piece rather than Les Precieuses 
Ridicules. In this selection Davenant was 
representative of the minor playwrights of 
the whole period, who regarded Moliere merely 
as a public storehouse of plots, incidents, and 
characters. Caryll pretty certainly had in 
mind the recent borrowing from MoUere as 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 81 

well as from other sources when he wrote a 
caustic passage in the epilogue to his own 
adaptation of UEcole des Femmes (1669-70) : — 

Faith, be good natur'd to this hungry Crew, 
Who, what they filch abroad, bring home to you. 

But still exclude those Men from all Relief, 
Who steal themselves, yet boldly cry, Stop Thief : 
Like taking Judges, these without Remorse 
Condemn all petty Thefts, and practice worse ; 
As if they Robb'd by Patent, and alone 
Had right to call each Foreign Play their own. 

What we have brought before you, was not meant 
For a new Play, but a new President ; 
For we with Modesty our Theft avow, 
(There is some Conscience us'd in stealing too) 
And openly declare, that if our Cheer 
Does hit your Pallats, you must thank Molliere.^ 

A decade later MoHere's dramas had been so 
frequently resorted to that Thomas Durfey 
asked in a song appearing in Sir Barnaby 
Whig (1681), 

Moliere is quite rifled, then how shall I write ? ^ 
An equally suggestive piece of evidence occurs 
at the very end of the period. Corey's Meta- 
morphosis was published in 1704 as '^Written 
Originally by the Famous MoHere/' when in 

^ Cf . epilogue to Sir Salomon. 
2 Cf. Kerby, p. iii. 



82 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

reality it owed absolutely nothing to him. 
It was merely a reworking, with very close 
paraphrase in many places, of Tomkis's 
Alhumazar, an academic play popular in 
Jacobean times/ Other evidence that Mohere 
was still plundered is afforded by Brown's 
Stage-Beaux tossed in a Blanket, published 
in the same year and intended as a reply 
to Collier's Short View of the Immorality and 
Profaneness of the English Stage. Though 
Brown had been writing satire most of his 
life, he apparently felt unequal to inventing 
a plot sufficiently biting or sarcastic for an 
attack on Collier, since in the first and third 
acts of this farce he adapted part of La Cri- 
tique de VEcole des Femmes and a scene from 
Le Tartuffe. Brown recognized the satiric 
element in Moliere much more distinctly 
than most of the minor dramatists of the 
age, but his play was entirely typical in one 
respect : it indicates how persistent was the 

1 It is easy to explain the few similarities that exist 
between Metamorphosis and UAvare. Alhumazar was 
based on Porta's U Astrologo (ef. Smith, p. 566, and the 
reference there given), which in turn must owe a good 
deal to Aulularia. The play of Plautus was the source 
of several features of UAvare. The similarities are thus 
due to a common ultimate source. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 83 

belief that Moliere afforded the most con- 
venient source for almost any kind of mate- 
rial the dramatist might need. 

The attitude of these men being that of 
the practical playwright, who makes no effort 
to reproduce the spirit of the original, but 
spends all his time in adapting the material 
to his audience, their borrowing naturally 
assumed a variety of forms. Often whole 
scenes were lifted from their French context 
and inserted in some Enghsh play with only 
the necessary changes. It was in this 
fashion that Congreve among the leaders 
made use of a famous scene in Don Juan 
for the opening of Love for Love. Among 
ephemeral plays, the opening of Sedley's 
Mulberry Garden was similarly taken from 
UEcole des Maris. Singularly enough, no 
further . assistance was derived from the 
French piece except in so far as the two 
brothers thus introduced continued through- 
out the action. Such use of adapted or sug- 
gested characters was a second form which 
borrowing assumed. The subject, too large 
for discussion here, will be treated at length 
in a later chapter, but it may not be out of 



84 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

place to note that in this matter, as in others, 
the minor dramatists were not studying the 
French genius as a master, but were delving 
into his works just as Scarron and Rotrou 
delved into the inexhaustible mine of Span- 
ish comedy. They consequently took from 
Moliere whatever incidents, situations, types, 
and characters struck their fancy. For they 
would have found incomprehensible the pres- 
ent estimate of Moliere as one of the greatest 
comic geniuses, so that they were never in- 
fluenced by the respect for their source as 
a work of art which would guide an English 
adaptor in handling Die Versunkene Glocke 
or El Gran Galeoto. It is therefore only fair 
to judge them by their success in making 
the borrowed material suit their purposes. 
For they were obliged to observe the prin- 
ciple enunciated in my first chapter, that the 
comic sense is by no means a fixed quantity, 
and while a Restoration wit did not differ 
in taste from a wealthy bourgeois under 
Louis XIV as much as a Hottentot would 
from a New Yorker, the difference was great 
enough to render imperative a considerable 
alteration in nearly any French play that 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 85 

was to succeed at Drury Lane or Lincoln's 
Inn Fields. They had the further justifi- 
cation, that they generally selected parts of 
Moliere's hghter plays and comedies of in- 
trigue in preference to his masterpieces. 

Among the larger forms of borrowing trans- 
lation as close as Davenant's was extremely 
rare. Indeed, the only similar productions 
were Dryden's Amphitryon, Otway's Cheats 
of Scapiriy Vanbrugh's Mistake, and Med- 
bourne's Tartuffe. Medbourne was wilhng 
to be credited with great admiration for Le 
Tartuffe, but he would very likely have been 
puzzled to explain the grounds of his esti- 
mate in the dedication : — 

My Lord, I Here Present your Honour with the 
Master-Piece of Moliere's Productions, or rather of all 
French Comedy. What considerable Additional I 
have made thereto, in order to its more plausible Ap- 
pearance on the English Theatre, I leave to be observ'd 
by those who shall give themselves the trouble of com- 
paring the several Editions of this Comedy. 

The plausibility he refers to concerns the de- 
nouement In Moliere the outcome is in 
suspense until the end, when the power of 
the King intervenes to avert the ruin hanging 



86 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

over Orgon. Medbourne develops an in- 
trigue between Laurence (corresponding to 
Tartuffe's servant, Laurent, who does not 
appear on the stage in the original), and the 
maid Dorina, whereby the estate conveyed 
to Tartuffe is returned to the giver and the 
other persons are warned in time to secure 
the assistance of King and council in worsting 
the hypocrite. This intrigue is of course 
closed by the marriage of the participants. 
Medbourne gives full measure in marriages 
by having the lover Valere promise his sister, 
unheard of in the French, to the boyish and 
impetuous Damis. These changes, however, 
are insignificant compared with the addition 
at the close, where the characters join in a 
dance ! A partial explanation of why Med- 
bourne missed the spirit of the original so 
far is suggested by a specimen or two of his 
translation. Not only is the idiom "avoir 
raison" rendered by "have right," but ex- 
pressions such as "ces galants de cour dont 
les femmes sont folles"^ appear in English 
as "Courtly Gallants whose fooUsh prating 

1 Which may be rendered colloquially: " Those court 
gallants the wonien are so crazy about." 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 87 

wives." A more wretched misconception of 
meaning results in giving ^^ ravel me back to 
my first nothing" for "vos bontes . . . 
jusqu'a mon neant daignent se ravaler." ^ 
All this striving for faithfulness is embodied 
in the worst blank verse ever spoken in an 
English theater. When Moliere's most power- 
ful and poetic speeches are rendered in this 
style, it is a matter of no significance that the 
translator betrays respect for the ^^Master- 
Piece ... of all French Comedy" by omitting 
only some half-dozen scenes. Dry den's Am- 
phitryon is of course much more worthy of 
the original, but not so representative of the 
period. Medbourne's peculiarity is not that 
he lowered the tone of Moliere's comedy, but 
that he made any effort to retain the integ- 
rity and spirit of the original. 

Translation, however, was far less frequent 
than adaptation. The commonest form was 
the combining of two or more plots in order 
to satisfy the English demand for action, but 
there were various methods of effecting this 
combination. Ravenscroft would sit down s 

1 Freely translated: "Your kindness condescends to 
my worthless state." 



88 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

with a long pair of shears, a large pot of 
paste, and two or three of Moliere's comedies, 
and after much cutting out and ingenious 
pasting together would produce a most be- 
wildering scrap-book farce. Dryden would 
read over carefully several plays, one of them 
preferably Spanish, revolve the various in- 
cidents in his capacious memory, and after 
long musing evolve a new course of action in 
which the best situations would reappear 
with a modified set of dramatis personce. 
A more minute examination of a representa- 
tive play will indicate the spirit in which the 
adaptations were made. 

The Dumb Lady (1669) of John Lacy, the 
actor, will serve the purpose as well as any. 
The play consists of more episodes than can 
well be taken into account, but the main 
plot may be summarized thus : Drench, a 
farrier, beats his wife in a quarrel, and she 
in revenge persuades two men who are hunt- 
ing for a physician that he is the greatest in 
the world, though it takes a beating to make 
him admit it. They accordingly beat him 
into an admission and take him to old Ger- 
nette, whose daughter Olinda has recently 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 89 

been struck dumb at a very inopportune time, 
since it prevents her marriage with Squire 
Softhead, a foohsh countryman whom her 
father has selected because the squire's estate 
surrounds his. After at length prescribing 
treatment for Olinda, Drench meets Leander, 
Olinda's lover, whom he is prevailed upon to 
introduce into Gernette's house as his apoth- 
ecary. 

Up to this point Lacy followed Le Medecin 
malgre lui closely, but it was obviously in- 
advisable to follow it further, since to do so 
would close his play with the third act. A 
very simple method of expanding it to five 
acts presented itself — to adapt U Amour 
Medecin for the remainder of the play. This 
he accomplished in the following manner: — 

Drench effects a cure of Ohnda's dumbness, 
which of course has been all pretense, but he 
has her feign madness in order that there 
may be some ground for asking her removal 
to his apothecary's house. The suspicious 
father will hear nothing of the plan, and even 
ejects the two rogues from the house as im- 
postors. They secure reinstatement by hand- 
ing over an alleged letter of Leander, and at 



90 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

once join in a consultation of physicians that 
Gernette has called to consider his daughter's 
case. Then it is necessary that Drench play 
the part of the doctor, instead of the lover's 
playing it, as in U Amour Medecin. The 
consultation is also altered by the fact that 
Drench must sustain his pretensions before 
actual physicians. This is one reason for 
the introduction of Othentic, a brother of 
Leander who is in orders and who is of great 
assistance to Drench in hoodwinking the 
doctors. Having come out victorious over 
the genuine physicians, Drench declares that 
the only way to cure Olinda's insanity is to 
humor her prepossessions by pretending to 
marry her to his apothecary. Here we find 
a further reason for introducing Othentic, 
that he may take the part of the notaire in 
the original and unite the two in marriage. 
Clearly, then, Le Medecin malgre lui is the 
basis of the play and furnishes the incidents 
of the first three acts, in the first two of which 
the original is followed closely. U Amour 
Medecin furnishes the incidents for the last 
two acts, but the alterations are considerable 
owing to the adjustment with the plot of the 
preceding divisions. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 91 

Even the combining of the two plots did 
not give as much briskness to his play as 
Lacy thought necessary. He accordingly pre- 
sented a number of minor actions or episodes. 
The first and most important of these was 
already partly developed in Le Medecin 
malgre lui in the scenes between the mock- 
doctor Sganarelle and the nurse Jacqueline. 
Those scenes were far too tame for Lacy ; 
he not only made the dialogue licentious, 
but he easily converted the action into an 
intrigue of the lowest kind, the nurse with 
very little reluctance proving false to her 
husband. The husband, Jarvis, in a measure 
gets even with her by entering into similar 
relations with Drench's wife, who has followed 
the quack, but whom that now famous doctor 
has refused to own, even having her locked 
up in a cage to get rid of her importunities. 
She and Jarvis together attempt to expose 
Drench, but he retaliates by securing her con- 
finement in a madhouse. The humor of the 
scene is undeniable, but it owes nothing to 
Moliere. Another source of comic effect 
employed from time to time is the illicit 
relations existing between the nurse and 



92 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Gernette. One might suppose the intrigue 
now confused enough to suit even the most 
fastidious Restoration audience, but such a 
supposition would prove the reader unac- 
quainted with this kind of play. Another 
episode that fills several scenes is developed 
from Le Medecin malgre lui. The rival of 
Leandre does not appear in Moliere, but Lacy 
exhibits him at full length in Softhead, a 
conventional figure in the plays of the period. 
There has been an attempt at a duel between 
Leander and Softhead, in which the latter 
has distinguished himself by his arrant cow- 
ardice. He accidentally meets Leander after 
that redoubtable antagonist and resource- 
ful young lover has assumed the disguise 
of an apothecary. When Leander sees he is 
not recognized, he frightens the cully into 
paying two hundred pounds by reporting that 
Leander is nearing death from the wounds 
received. The humor is increased by the 
fact that Softhead not only has to pay, but 
has afterward to confess that he ran away 
from the encounter. 

The episode indicates how quick an eye 
Lacy had for a situation and thus explains 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 93 

his recognition of Moliere as a rich source of 
comic incidents. For MoHere as the pen- 
etrating student of manners and character 
he found no use, and even for MoHere as a 
master of farce he held none too exalted an 
opinion. He made no effort to reproduce 
the comic spirit of the plays he was adapting. 
Drench, for example, was made a farrier in- 
stead of a wood-cutter in order to render the 
action more plausible. MoUere was attack- 
ing the medical profession and of a purpose 
made the mock-doctor Sganarelle the most 
good-for-nothing person imaginable. Lacy, 
having no such satiric aim, retained only 
so much of the ridicule as would seem funny 
on general grounds, and rendered the action 
more likely by raising the doctor in the social 
scale. There is, moreover, a persistent effort 
to lower the tone of the original to the level 
which Lacy's experience as an actor had taught 
him would best suit a Restoration audience. 
In the first place, most of the important 
changes in character should be ascribed to 
the adaptor's search for indecency. The 
quarrel between Drench and his wife near 
the beginning arises over her unfaithfulness; 



94 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

she proudly declares that but one of her four 
children is the farrier's. Even the sup- 
posedly pure characters are made to furnish 
the same kind of amusement. Olinda, while 
not impure, is not exactly a model of dehcacy; 
she is disappointed when Leander says they 
are to have only eight children, and in her 
pretended madness she addresses her father 
with a coarseness totally unthinkable in the 
Lucinde of the original. In the second 
place. Lacy inserts a great many dialogues 
which have no value for characterization and 
do not advance the action, but which are so 
thoroughly seasoned with the spice of ribaldry 
that they must have tickled the palates of 
the Restoration theater-goers in exactly the 
way to give them zest for the whole play. 

Very clearly, then. Lacy had definitely de- 
cided that there were two sure roads to 
popularity. They were, not to reproduce the 
atmosphere and spirit of Moliere's comedy, 
but to introduce as much intrigue as possible, 
in order to hold the attention by briskness 
of movement, and to infuse into the play a 
great deal of wanton incident and licentious 
dialogue. He produced not only a complete 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 95 

adaptation, but a typical illustration of the 
attitude toward Moliere prevailing among 
the second-rate dramatists. 

Among men of greater distinction there 
was a third class of borrowings, which con- 
sisted in little more than the use of suggestions. 
The plot of The English Friar, for example, is 
developed from the main points in Le Tartuffe, 
but to call Crowne's play an adaptation is to 
use the term in a loose sense. Sometimes 
only a single scene is thus developed. In Love 
Triumphant a nurse brings in two children 
just when the light o' love Dalinda is about 
to secure a husband. In Monsieur de Pour- 
ceaugnac the title character, who has come 
all the way from Limoges to Paris to marry 
the daughter of Oronte, is confronted in 
Oronte's presence by two women who pre- 
tend to have married him in the provinces and 
who bring in children to support their asser- 
tions. The common elements are obvious 
enough, but the surrounding circumstances 
are so different that, if borrowings from 
Moliere were not numerous in Dryden, one 
would hesitate to affirm that the French situa- 
tion is the suggestion for the EngUsh scene. 



96 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

The inference to be drawn from these 
various translations, adaptations, and in- 
stances of suggestion is clear : the second- 
rate dramatist of the period did not consider 
the Frenchman as any more a master of play- 
writing than himself, and found him in con- 
stant need of improvement for English 
audiences. But we are not dependent on in- 
ference alone in estimating the rank accorded 
to MoHere during the Restoration. Direct 
statements abound. A few dramatists, like 
Medbourne,^ place Moliere very high. Caryll 
in 1670 speaks of him as 

the Famous Shakspear of this Age, 
Both when he Writes, and when he treads the Stage.^ 

Wright in 1693 refers to him as 'Hhe great 
Original of French Comedy." ^ Both of 
these estimates, however, come from men of 
taste who had a literary, not a practical, inter- 
est in Moliere. They wrote plays once in a 
while for diversion, not as fast as they could 
for bread and butter. The minor playwrights, 
who knew Restoration audiences and who 

1 Cf. dedication to Tartuffe. 

2 Cf . epilogue to Sir Salomon. 

3 Cf . dedication to The Female Virtuosoes. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 97 

were eager to please them, assumed a very 
complacent, patronizing air toward the author 
of Le Misanthrope. Shad well in the preface 
to his Miser (1671) has this to say of his in- 
debtedness : — 

The Foundation of this Play I took from one of 
Moliere's, call'd UAvare; but that having too few Per- 
sons, and too Httle Action for an Enghsh Theatre, I 
added to both so much, that I may call more than half 
of this Play my own ; and I think I may say without 
Vanity, that Moliere's Part of it has not suffer'd in 
my Hands ; nor did I ever know a French Comedy made 
use of by the worst of our Poets, that was not better'd 
by 'em. 'Tis not Barrenness of Wit or Invention, that 
makes us borrow from the French, but Laziness ; and 
this was the Occasion of my making Use of UAvare} 

At the close of the period Mrs. Centlivre sums 
up the feeling with equal definiteness : — 

Some Scenes I confess are partly taken from Moliere, 
and I dare be bold to say it has not suffered in the Trans- 
lation : I thought 'em pretty in the French, and cou'd 
not help believing they might divert in an English Dress. 
The French have that light Airiness in their Temper, 
that the least Glimpse of Wit sets them a laughing, when 
'twou'd not make us so much as smile ; so that when I 
found the stile too poor, I endeavoured to give it a Turn ; 
for whoever borrows from them, must take care to 
1 Shadwell, Works, iii. 7. 



98 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

touch the Colours with an English Pencil, and form the 
Piece according to our Manners.^ 

Even the leading dramatists, the men who 
were most profoundly influenced by the 
genius across the Channel, were not at all 
disposed to acknowledge their indebtedness. 
Congreve nowhere avowed his study of Mo- 
liere, and Dryden carefully refrained from giv- 
ing intimation of how thoroughly he had read 
the Frenchman's comedies. In the Essay of 
Dramatic Poesy Moliere is mentioned, but 
only for his alleged imitation of the Enghsh or 
his boldness in using prose. ^ 

The conclusion is obvious. The minor 
playwrights of the Restoration, who borrowed 
from Moliere oftener and in more wholesale 
fashion than any other author, except per- 
haps Lope de Vega, has ever been borrowed 
from, seldom recognized the greatness of the 
Frenchman's genius. In general they re- 
garded him, not as a master of the comic 
to be studied for his view of life or his dram- 
aturgic skill, but as a storehouse of plots, 
scenes, and characters to be adapted to the 

1 Cf . preface to Love's Contrivance. 

2 Cf . Dryden, Works, xv. 330, 354. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 99 

well-known taste of the Restoration audi- 
ences. The modern estimate of Moliere as 
not only the greatest comic dramatist of 
France but as one of the few comic geniuses 
of the world, would have seemed to them the 
veriest nonsense. He was merely a popular 
comedian whose plays were mighty good 
sources for material, provided always the ma- 
terial was improved for the more exacting 
English taste. This attitude explains the in- 
fluence of Moliere on the mass of ephemeral 
comedy of the age. The leading dramatists 
caught something of the spirit of Moliere' s 
comedy of manners, but the minor play- 
wrights saw in him only the clever manipu- 
lator of a comedy of intrigue. 



CHAPTER V 

PLOT 

It will be remembered that of the three 
classes into which I divided Mohere's plays, 
the comedy of intrigue was merely a continua- 
tion of the type up to that time dominant 
in France. Indeed, the type was ancient and 
widespread. Passing over the New Comedy 
of Greece, of which too little is known even 
since the most recent discoveries, one will 
recall that the work of Plautus and Terence 
was largely of this variety. A common plot 
was the schemes of a resourceful and un- 
scrupulous slave to secure to the young hero 
a mistress from the hands of some rapacious 
and hard-hearted procurer. This intriguing 
servant was inherited by the Italian comedy 
of masks, and often the plots of Latin plays, 
as well as stories from novelle, and at a later 
period imbroglios from the Spanish comedia, 
were adapted for the scenarios tacked up in 
100 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 101 

the theater behind the scenes for the guidance 
of the improvising actors.^ But the intrigue 
of Plautus was hardly sufficient for a pubHc 
which had Uttle interest in anything but move- 
ment, so that suggestions for minor intrigues 
were frequently developed in somewhat the 
same way that Lacy developed such sugges- 
tion in Le Medecin malgre lui.^ The action 
thereby became a loose and confusing com- 
bination of stratagems. While the commedia 
delV arte was reaching the height of its popu- 
larity in Italy and France, Lope de Vega 
and his followers were developing the famous 
comedy of cloak and sword in Spain. In it, 
too, the playwright's effort was to construct 
a maze of incident which should keep the 
audience perpetually guessing what was to 
come next, but the unrivaled ingeniousness 
of the Spaniard produced plots which were 
at once intricate and compact. The story 
unrolled itself with many turns and counter- 
turns, so that the playgoer was kept wonder- 
ing till the very close exactly how the author 

* Cf. Bartoli, introduzione. 

2 Cf . ante, p. 88 ff . For the way in which the Pseudo- 
lus of Plautus was thus adapted, cf. Scherillo, p. 121 ff. 



102 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

was going to bring the loving pairs into each 
other's arms. Equally skilful was the inter- 
weaving of different lines of action. The spec- 
tator seldom became conscious of the separate- 
ness of the parts, for episodic figures, such 
as Don Mendo and Nuiio in El Alcalde de 
Zalamea,^ were extremely rare in the Spanish 
comedia. It will be recalled that the comedia 
was transplanted to France during the youth 
of Moliere, but the form which influenced 
him most was the commedia delV arte, with 
which he became familiar in his provincial 
journeyings. His first play, VEtourdi, may be 
taken as a brilliant development of that type. 
The minor dramatists of the Restoration 
had exactly the same end in view as the Ital- 
ians and Spaniards — to hold the attention of 
the audience by abundant movement. This 
effort was no new thing in England. Kyd 
in his Spanish Tragedy made large use of the 
same kind of appeal, and Fletcher employed 
it constantly. The Restoration playwrights 
were gifted neither with the inventiveness 
requisite for devising incidents in a compli- 

1 Of course this play does not belong to the cloak-and- 
sword type. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 103 

cated stratagem nor with power to construct 
a coherent plot out of material already at 
hand. Some of them frankly recognized their 
weakness by translating foreign plays. Tuke's 
Adventures of Five Hours was taken from 
Calderon with apparently no changes in plot. 
Otway, who in comedy must be placed with 
the ephemeral writers, likewise translated Les 
Fourheries de Scapin with very few altera- 
tions. Other men, however, found even the 
most vivacious pieces of Moliere too slow for 
the more exacting taste of EngUshmen, and 
accordingly "improved" his efforts. Of this 
class was Edward Ravenscroft, so inveterate 
a plagiarist that when he no longer found any- 
thing good in Moliere or other Frenchmen, 
he plagiarized from his own earlier plagiarisms. 
His first play, Mamamouchi (1671), is typi- 
cal of his method. The main action is made 
up of several parts. Mr. Jorden, a citizen 
whose wealth has turned his head to the ex- 
tent that he now sets up for a gentleman 
and takes lessons in music, dancing, and 
fencing, is determined that his daughter Lucia 
shall marry into the aristocracy, and accord- 
ingly has chosen a foolish country knight. 



104 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Sir Simon Softhead, for his son-in-law. 
Lucia's lover, Cleverwit, plans and executes 
a number of projects to win her : (1) with the 
help of some ^'men of intrigue" he succeeds 
in disgusting Sir Simon with London and Lucia; 
(2) at the same time he disgusts Mr. Jorden 
with the knight ; (3) he then wins Lucia 
by disguising himself as the Grand Turk, in 
which character he is acceptable to Mr. 
Jorden. This action is drawn from several 
sources. The depiction of Mr. Jorden's folly 
is taken from the first three acts of Le Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme. The first two of Clever- 
wit's intrigues are a reproduction of Monsieur 
de Pourceaugnac. The third is a copy of the 
Turkish masquerade scenes in Le Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme. This procedure surely betrays 
no effort to reproduce Moliere's dramatic 
structure. 

There is a second action almost as important 
as the first. Mr. Jorden's son is in love with 
Marina, a girl whom his father intends to 
marry. He accordingly schemes to win her 
from his father by having a sempstress mas- 
querade as a German princess, whom Mr. 
Jorden of course prefers on account of her 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 105 

rank. He also wishes to secure money from 
his father. Cureall, a man of intrigue, does 
this for a time by pretending to be a doctor 
intimate at court. Later the son gets his 
father's whole estate by making use of Clever- 
wit's disguise as the Grand Turk ; the father 
is so much pleased at being made a mama- 
mouchi that by the advice of another rogue 
he settles his entire fortune on his son in order 
to live with the Sultan. This action, too, has 
several sources. The device of making the 
father and son rivals is taken from UAvare, 
Cureall' s disguise is an adaptation of the role 
of Dorante in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and 
the Turkish scenes are of course from the same 
play. Betty Trickmore's disguise as a Ger- 
man princess is a reminiscence of Frosine's 
plan in UAvare or of Les Precieuses Ridicules. 
The plot as a whole, then, is a combina- 
tion of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Mon- 
sieur de Pourceaugnac, with an important 
addition from UAvare and a hint from Les 
Precieuses Ridicules. The two actions are 
bound together by the rogues, Cureall and 
Trickmore, who appear in both, and also by 
having Sir Simon, the country knight of the 



106 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

first part, marry Betty Trickmore, the re- 
puted German princess of the second part. 
The EngHshman displayed considerable in- 
genuity in thus piecing together the shreds 
and patches taken from the work of the great 
Frenchman. 

But the full ingeniousness of Ravenscroft's 
method doth not yet appear. He did not 
borrow only the incidents from his sources. 
He borrowed most of the dialogue, too. When 
he did not translate he paraphrased, making 
only such changes as his complicated plot 
and the English scene demanded. He simply 
altered the dialect of a Flemish merchant to 
that of a man from Norwich, and instead of 
a count who was an accomplished scoundrel 
he introduced a rogue who used the same 
speeches in the disguise of a court physician. 
By such means he saved himself the trouble 
of writing nine-tenths of the dialogue, and in 
the remaining tenth he followed more or less 
closely some scene in Moliere as a model. 

The whole extent of the ^improvement" 
becomes clear on considering the dramatis 
personce in this salmagundi of situations. 
Ravenscroft^s Mr. Jorden is of course M. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 107 

Jourdain through most of the play, but in 
many scenes he has to act the part of Oronte 
in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. Clearly, this 
concocter of a pure comedy of intrigue felt 
no disagreement between Moliere's masterly 
delineation of the folly of middle-class am- 
bition and his sketch of a typical self-centered 
father. He even thought it proper to have 
M. Jourdain play the part of Harpagon by 
preparing to marry a young woman with 
no pretensions to aristocracy ! He thus with 
a very small expenditure of energy was able 
to produce a very busy course of action. If 
commercial success be a criterion, he was 
perfectly justified.^ 

Further illustrations are unnecessary to 
show that the hack writers of the period were 
not following Moliere or the Spanish in plot- 
structure. The Englishmen, to be sure, were 
resorting to the same means of holding an 
audience. That is one reason why they 
adapted so frequently the disguise employed 
in Les Precieuses Ridicules ^ and why they 

1 Cf . Downes, p. 32. 

2 Besides the play by Ravenscroft considered above, 
cf . Behn's False Count, Shadwell's Bury Fair, Betterton's 
Amorous Widow, Congreve's Way of the World. 



108 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

borrowed from time to time a good many 
devices and situations from the Spanish. 
But they were far from displaying the skill 
of Moliere or Lope de Vega in interlacing the 
different actions. Such skill would have been 
impossible to them in any event, but as a 
matter of fact they did not strive for that kind 
of structure. They sought not only to pro- 
duce much action, but to introduce many per- 
sons. Their method was more like that of 
Fletcher and the Jacobeans, whose plays were 
constantly revived during the early Restora- 
tion. Fletcher was indeed a man of great 
ingenuity, but the intrigues in his plays were 
often quite distinct and always easily sepa- 
rable, and the scene was thronged with actors. 
The Restoration writers, no matter what the 
source of their incidents, put plots together 
in the same way, only with less cleverness. 
Mrs. Behn in Sir Patient Fancy produced just 
as confusing a set of stratagems and dramatis 
personce in her use of Le Malade Imaginaire 
as Thomas Durfey did in Madam Fickle in 
taking suggestions from Marston, Mayne, 
and other pre-Restoration playwrights. But 
the illustrations I have given from Lacy and 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 109 

Ravenscroft are sufficient to indicate the 
characteristics of a typical Restoration plot. 

Among the leading dramatists, also, this 
type of plot prevailed. They, too, sought to 
fill the scene with as much movement as pos- 
sible and to provide an interesting variety 
of persons. Wycherley adapted Le Misan- 
thrope by adding several new lines of action. 
Dryden in Limherham, while professing to 
write social satire in imitation of Le Tartuffe, 
spun as tangled a skein of incidents as the 
period has to offer. Congreve in his first 
play spent a deal of time in making his plot 
complex, and he succeeded in making it so 
confusing that no one can remember it. The 
truth is, the Restoration audiences, though 
interested in manners, were interested only 
in the superficial aspect of manners, and con- 
sequently had to be entertained with the con- 
stant coming and going of actors and the 
frequent alternation of suspense and surprise. 

In a previous chapter I made a distinction 
between MoUere's comedy of intrigue and 
the comedy which is distinctively his — the 
comedy of manners and character. In this 
class he employed a different kind of structure. 



110 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

He did not endeavor to give many turns and 
counter-turns to the story, to arouse suspense 
anew when the play seemed about to end, 
to render everything again doubtful when all 
mistakes and misunderstandings were ap- 
parently to be cleared up, to bring the intrigue 
to a sudden close when the confusion was 
at its height. He now invented or adapted 
an action which should reveal the character 
or develop the social question he wished to 
present. The plot evolved itself from the 
interplay of character, and moved forward 
in a single Hne, with clear motivation, to a 
logical outcome. The interest was centered, 
not in movement and bustle, but in the con- 
troUing idea and the dominating character. 
It was consonant with this interest that the 
conditions in which Moliere set his action 
were adjusted with the greatest nicety to the 
theme with which each play dealt. The circle 
of learned ladies where Philaminte defies all 
her husband's notions concerning the sphere 
of woman, the bourgeois home where Tartuffe 
commands as director of conscience, the salon 
of the accomplished woman of the world 
where Alceste fumes at the insincerities of 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 111 

life — all these settings show how fine and 
profound an artist Moliere was. 

Wliat I have said about the Restoration 
comedy of intrigue makes it unnecessary to 
remark that such simplicity of structure was 
not to be found in England, even among the 
leading dramatists of the period. Dryden, 
I have already observed, formed his dramatic 
method under Spanish influences. His char- 
acters in many cases were, under the in- 
fluence of Moliere, made typical of some j 
ridiculous pretension of the times, but his 
plots were never constructed so that the action 
should present a retributive judgment that 
would by itself express the author's criticism 
of society. It was this method of enforcing 
a thesis, handled with the impartiality of a 
true artist, that the author of Le Misanthrope 
constantly employed in his comedy of char- 
acter. In VEcole des Maris, Ariste, the in- 
dulgent guardian, is made happy in the end 
with the hand of his ward, while his brother, 
the severe Sganarelle, is humiliatingly repaid 
for his severity by losing his ward to the young' 
rival he has treated through most of the play 
with self-satisfied commiseration. Likewise 



112 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Arnolphe of UEcole des Femmes, who has 
gone to absurd extremes to insure fidelity 
in his wife-to-be, wins nothing but anxiety 
from all his precautions, and is at the close 
forced to give this intended wife to a young 
wooer. Dryden paid no attention to this 
feature of the Frenchman's art, but Wycher- 
ley, where he was copying Moliere, did in- 
troduce a kind of poetic justice to teach some 
social lesson. In The Country Wife, for ex- 
ample, Pinchwife, a worn-out rake, who, in 
imitation of Arnolphe, is made to marry a 
country girl in order to be sure he will have 
one woman all to himself, is in the end doomed 
to share her with Horner. Wycherley did 
this not merely because events in the original 
were arranged similarly, but because he wished 
to enforce a view of woman, for he presented 
a contrasting action to emphasize the point. 
But he did not use the method consistently. 
Lady Fidget, against whom he repeatedly 
directed his satire, is in the last scene placed 
where she can carry on her practices indefi- 
nitely. In The Plain Dealer, again. Freeman, 
though put down in the dramatis personoe as 
a compiler with the age and delineated as the 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 113 

antithesis of Wycherley's ideal presented in 
Manly, is allowed to accomplish his plans 
exactly as he wishes. In short, it is clear 
that Wycherley did not entirely adopt, along 
with Mohere's satiric attitude toward con- 
temporary manners, the Frenchman's method 
of constructing a plot. 

A similar statement may be made of Con- 
greve. Lady Wishfort, for example, in The 
Way of the World, is humiliated in the same 
manner as Cathos and Madelon in Les Pre- 
cieuses Ridicules, and the contrasting char- 
acter Millamant is rewarded with the good 
fortune due to youth and beauty, but other 
Hnes of action in the play, though helping to 
fill out an unrivaled picture of high society, 
cannot be said to enforce any thesis. The 
truth is. Restoration dramatists had no pro- 
found convictions to enforce, and they knew 
their audiences had no interest whatever 
in theses. After taking account of a few 
class prejudices and preferences, the play- 
wright had no care but to keep his scene 
filled with moving figures. It was there- 
fore impossible that he should employ 
Mohere's method of constructing a plot on 



114 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

a controlling idea around a dominating char- 
acter. 

In connection with plot-structure we should 
consider the everlasting question of the unities. 
It is a famiUar story that the rules which in 
the sixteenth century had been developed in 
Italy from the revival and misunderstanding 
of Aristotle, were in the seventeenth century 
in France enacted into criminal statutes. 

. Moliere, writing in the third quarter of the 
century, when the reign of classicism was most 
nearly absolute, observed the unities, not 

rfrom fear of rigorous judges, but as a matter 

, of convention. In Don Juan he threw them 
to the winds, and in the beginning of his 
career he used the Italian setting, so that a 
good many intimate conversations are held 
in the open street, — which seems to us a 
ridiculous place for such intimacies, but which 
seemed natural enough to his audience, — 
but in his comedies of character he observed 

' the rules with as much ease as Racine. These 
rules were at the Restoration introduced into 
England along with French fans, coaches, 
and cheese. Indeed, the wits of the period 
looked back with a very complacent air of 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 115 

superiority on the unpolished and even bar- 
barous EUzabethans. The critical writings 
of Dryden in particular exemplify this wor- 
ship of regularity, though his sturdy English 
nature caused some wavering in his ad- 
herence to French leadership. In his own 
practice and that of the period the influence 
of the classical attitude was pervasive. No 
matter how many hues of action a playwright 
introduced, he placed all of them in the same 
vicinity and concluded them • in as short a 
time as he conveniently could. The observ- 
ance of unity of place was of course immensely 
assisted by the introduction of painted scenery, 
but that of unity of time must be ascribed 
to the force of classicism alone. 

Moliere's part in this change in English 
comedy was that of furnishing a model. 
It is much easier to follow a rule when you 
see how some one else has followed it. Shad- 
well gives clear testimony on this point in the 
preface to his first production. He says : — 

I have in this Play, as near as I could, observ'd the 

^ three Unities, of Time, Place, and Action ; The Time 

of the Drama does not exceed six Hours, the Place is 

in a very narrow Compass, and the main Action of the 



116 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Play, upon which all the rest depend, is the sullen Love 
betwixt Stanford and Emilia, which kind of Love is 
only proper to their Characters : I have here, as often 
as I could naturally, kept the Scenes unbroken, which 
(though it be not so much practis'd, or so well under- 
stood, by the English) yet among the French Poets is 
accounted a great Beauty/ 

The particular French play he has in mind is 
of course Le Misanthrope, from which is taken 
a good part of the design, but he falls short of 
the success Moliere attained in that drama. 
He brings in two minor intrigues which de- 
stroy the unity of action ; - he changes the 
scene twice within the act ; ^ and even in the 
unity of time he commits himself to the ab- 
surdity that two such characters as Stanford 
and Emilia would fall in love with each other 
and decide to marry within six hours after 
the first meeting. Still, it is clear that Shad- 
well does his best to satisfy these unities, and 
that he does this in imitation of Moliere. 
This first play is representative of his efforts 
to the close of his dramatic career ; what he 
tried to accomplish in The Sullen Lovers 

1 Shadwell, Works, i. 8. 

2 The Level-Carolina and the Positive- Vaine in- 
trigues. 

3 In acts iii and v. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 117 

under the stimulus of Le Misanthrope he 
continued to strive for in Epsom Wells, The 
Virtuoso, and all his other original plays down 
to The Volunteers. 

The influence of Moliere on Etheredge in 
this matter is equally clear. In his first play 
he produced a tragi-comedy in which the 
comic plot was made up of three actions 
loosely connected. He also changed the 
scene twenty-six times, and thereby kept 
the mind of the spectator jumping about in 
anything but a restful fashion. The manage- 
ment was consequently as "rude and un- 
polished'' as that of any Elizabethan drama. 
In the four years intervening before his second 
play, discussion of the French unities had be- 
come rife among the court wits, and Ether- 
edge considered more carefully the method of 
Moliere, the only French dramatist he appears 
to have known well. She Would if She Could 
accordingly had only three lines of action, 
all dexterously interwoven, and the scene was 
shifted only ten times. Sir Fopling Flutter, 
with only eleven shifts of scene, indicates 
the same attempt to observe the rules so 
far as the English demand for multiplicity 



118 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

of persons and liveliness of action would 
permit. 

Of the period as a whole it may be said that, 
with all this classicism, the English did not 
study Moliere as a master of construction, 
as so many modern dramatists have studied 
Ibsen for dramaturgic hints. These writers 
of comedy rather found in Moliere the most 
familiar exemplification of the classical re- 
quirements they had already come to feel 
more or less constrained to observe. 

Bound up with Mohere's treatment of plot 
as a whole is his treatment of what is techni- 
cally known as the exposition of the play. 
His openings are frequently masterpieces. 
The monologue of Argan in Le Malade Im- 
aginaire gives us at once a complete under- 
standing of the theme of the piece. In Le 
Tartuffe the quarrel of Madame Pernelle 
with her daughter-in-law not only reveals 
the situations upon which the whole plot 
depends, but is as genuinely comic as any 
scene in his theater. Such means of arousing 
interest and putting the audience in posses- 
sion of the facts necessary to an understand- 
ing of the play were not very well adapted to 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 119 

plots where the attention was centered on 
incident rather than character, and as a mat- 
ter of fact very few Enghsh dramatists spent 
much thought on Mohere's devices. Con- 
greve, a close student of all sides of Moliere's 
art, opened The Double Dealer and The Way 
of the World with a conversation between 
the hero and his confidant in imitation of 
Le Misanthrope. In Love for Love the hero 
and his servant open the play, as in Le 
Depit Amoureux and several of the lighter 
pieces of Moliere. In The Old Bachelor and 
The Way of the World Congreve kept the 
spectators in suspense by deferring the en- 
trance of the women till the second act, as 
French audiences had been kept waiting for 
the appearance of Celimene. Long before 
this Etheredge had focused attention on a 
central character by following the device 
employed in Le Tartuffe, that of not bringing 
the central character on the stage till the 
beginning of the third act. Crowne imitated 
Etheredge in this and other details in Sir 
Courtly Nice. But all such instances of imita- 
tion are isolated. There was no general tend- 
ency to study MoUere's methods of exposition. 



120 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Le Tartuffe suggests a feature of Moliere's 
expositions which resulted from his absorbing 
interest in character. In all his great comedies 
the introduction takes up the better part of 
two acts. The great care taken to prepare 
for the appearance of the arch-hypocrite 
Tartuffe is typical. In UEcole des Femmes, 
for instance, we have reached the end of the 
second act before we are put in possession 
of the events that have taken place before 
the opening of the play. In Le Misanthrope, 
again, we must wait until near the end of the 
second act to become acquainted with all 
the characters and the relations existing 
among them. A glance at The Country Wife 
or The Plain Dealer will show that the same 
is largely true of Wycherley — a good part 
of the second act is with him given over to 
exposition. One reason is that he was borrow- 
ing another man's plots, so that it was not 
convenient to avoid this feature of Moliere's 
development of the stratagem. Another rea- 
son is that there was an indirect influence. 
Wycherley, who had caught the idea from 
MoUere's plays, was centering his attention 
on social criticism, so that his exposition 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 121 

naturally extended to a greater length than 
in the contemporary English comedy, whose 
plot-structure he was in the main following. 
The case of Congreve was somewhat different. 
He had in mind models for his different plays, 
but he followed them at a great distance. 
It is nevertheless true that the first two acts 
of all his plays but The Old Bachelor were 
largely given over to exposition, and conse- 
quently had the same lack of movement to 
be found in Moliere. In Restoration comedy 
as a whole such length of exposition was rare, 
for it was perilous in the hands of any but a 
master. The Restoration playgoer would begin 
a conversation with his neighbor if there was not 
something interesting going on on the stage. 

Another result of Moliere's absorbing in- 
terest in character was the constant intro- 
duction of scenes which neither hinder nor 
hasten the denouement. In one respect Les 
Fdcheux is typical of his whole method — 
the intrigue serves no purpose but to bring 
on the scene a musician, a pedant, a gamester, 
or a hunter ; that is, to display character. 
Plot was for him the frame for the portrait 
of a group against a background of manners. 



122 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

One need dip into very few plays to justify 
the statement. In UAvare the scene where 
the miser begins preparations for the dinner 
does not arouse any suspense concerning the 
outcome of the plot, but it is an intensely 
comic revelation of Harpagon's skinflint 
disposition. In Les Femmes Savantes the 
meeting of the learned ladies where Trissotin 
and Vadius revel in their pedantry is not in- 
troduced to disillusion Philaminte, as Scribe 
would have used it, but to give a brightly 
colored picture of the affectation Mohere 
was attacking. In Le Misanthrope the scene 
where Alceste at length gives his opinion of 
the sonnet, and the other where Celimene 
expresses her estimate of the different per- 
sons of her acquaintance, are developed far 
beyond the requirements of the intrigue, 
but those conversations give a masterly de- 
lineation of the misanthrope and the coquette, 
and, moreover, carry out the satirical pur- 
pose for which the play was written. Through- 
out his comedy of manners Moliere con- 
stantly followed this method, — sought the 
comic in the relation of the scene to life rather 
than in its relation to plot. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 123 

This feature of Moliere's art the leading 
Restoration dramatists seized on with avidity. 
Etheredge in his first play gave several such 
pictures from the life of a gallant, but the 
following passage is handled with a Hghter 
touch. Note that his delight in transcribing 
life caused him to linger over the scene much 
longer than was justified by its part in the 
plot. 

The New Exchange. Mrs. Trinket sitting in a shop: 
People passing by as in the Exchange. 

Trink. What d'ye buy ? what d'ye lack, gentlemen ? 
gloves, ribbons, and essences ; ribbons, gloves, and 
essences ? 

Enter Mr. Courtal. 

Mr. Courtal ! I thought you had a quarrel to the 
Change, and were resolved we should never see you here 
again. 

Court. Your unkindness indeed, Mrs. Trinket, had 
been enough to make a man banish himself forever. 

Enter Mrs. Gazette. 

Trink. Look you, yonder comes fine Mrs. Gazette ; 
thither you intend your visit, I am sure. 
Gaz. Mr. Courtal ! Your servant. 
Court. Your servant. Mistress Gazette. 
Gaz. This happiness was only meant to Mistress 



124 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Trinket ; had it not been my good fortune to pass by 
by chance, I should have lost my share on't. 

Court. This is too cruel, Mistress Gazette, when all 
the unkindness is on your side, to rally your servant thus. 

Gaz. I vow this tedious absence of yours made me 
believe you intended to try an experiment on my poor 
heart, to discover that hidden secret, how long a despair- 
ing lover may languish without the sight of the party. 

Court. You are always very pleasant on this subject, 
Mistress Gazette. 
' Gaz. And have not you reason to be so? 

Court. Not that I know of. 

Gaz. Yes, you hear the good news. 

Court. What good news? 

Gaz. How well this dissembling becomes you ! 
But now I think better on't, it cannot concern you ; 
you are more a gentleman than to have an amour last 
longer than an Easter term with a country lady ; and 
yet there are some, I see, as well in the country as in 
the city, that have a pretty way of huswifing a lover, 
and can spin an intrigue out a great deal farther than 
others are willing to do. . . . [She shows she knows 
Courtal's relations to Lady Cockwood.] I have fur- 
nished her and the young ladies with a few fashionable 
toys since they came to town, to keep 'em in countenance 
at a play or in the Park. 

Court. I would have thee go immediately to the young 
ladies, and by some device or other entice 'em hither. 

Gaz. I came just now from taking measure of 'em 
for a couple of handkerchiefs. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 125 

Court. How unlucky's this ! 

Gaz. They are calhng for their hoods and scarves, 
and are coming hither to lay out a Httle money in rib- 
bons and essences. I have recommended them to Mis- 
tress Trinket's shop here. . . . 

Court, [to Freeman]. Leave all things to me, and 
hope the best. Begone, for I expect their coming im- 
mediately ; walli a turn or two above, or fool awhile 
with pretty Mistress Anvil, and scent your eyebrows 
and periwig with a little essence of oranges or jessamine ; 
and when you see us all together at Mistress Gazette's 
shop, put in as it were by chance.^ 

Wycherley had the same interest in life, 
but he drew with heavier hnes and painted 
with deeper colors. His first play illustrates 
the satirical bent of his nature. 

Mrs. Crossbite's Dining-room. Enter Dapperwit 
and Ranger. 

Ran. But she will not hear you ; she's as deaf as if 
you were a dun or a constable. 

Dap. Pish ! give her but leave to gape, rub her eyes, 
and put on her day pinner ; the long patch under the 
left eye ; awaken the roses on her cheeks with some 
Spanish wool, and warrant her breath with some lemon- 
peel ; the doors fly off the hinges, and she into my arms. 
She knows there is as much artifice to keep a victory 
1 She Would if She Could, iii. 1 (p. 157 ff.). 



126 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

as to gain it ; and 'tis a sign she values the conquest of 
my heart. 

Ran. I thought her beauty had not stood in need of 
art. 

Dap. Beauty's a coward still without the help of 
art, and may have the fortune of a conquest but can- 
not keep it. Beauty and art can no more be asunder 
than love and honour. 

Ran. Or, to speak more like yourself, wit and judg- 
ment. 

Dap. Don't you hear the door wag yet? 

Ran. Not a whit. 

Dap. Miss ! miss ! 'tis your slave that calls. Come, 
all this tricking for him ! — Lend me your comb, Mr. 
Ranger. 

Ran. No, I am to be preferred to-day, you are to set 
me off. You are in possession, I will not lend you arms 
to keep me out. 

Dap. A pox ! don't let me be ungrateful ; if she has 
smugged herself up for me, let me prune and flounce 
my peruke a little for her. There's ne'er a young 
fellow in the town but will do as much for a mere stranger 
in the playhouse. 

Ran. A wit's wig has the privilege of being uncombed 
in the very playhouse, or in the presence. 

Dap. But not in the presence of his mistress ; 'tis 
a greater neglect of her than himself. Pray lend me 
your comb. 

Ran. I would not have men of wit and courage make 
use of every fop's mean arts to keep or gain a mistress. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 127 

Day. But don't you see every day, though a man 
have never so much wit and courage, his mistress will 
revolt to those fops that wear and comb perukes well. 
I'll break off the bargain, and will not receive you my 
partner. 

Ran. Therefore you see 1 am setting up for myself. 
[Combs his peruke. y 

But Wycherley frequently took very little 
pains to relate his cutting observations on 
the manners and customs of his time to the 
character uttering them. In adapting Le 
Misanthrope, for example, he went far beyond 
the original satire. In the second act of The 
Plain Dealer he reproduced the scandal scene 
of the French play with entirely superfluous 
additions that expanded it to more than twice 
its original length. In much the same man- 
ner the third act of the English comedy was 
devoted to satirical remarks on law and the 
practices of lawyers. Indeed, a distinguish- 
ing characteristic of Wycherley's comedy as 
a whole was the attention paid to witty 
realism, no matter how little it might con- 
tribute to the story or the delineation of 
character, 

1 Love in a Wood, iii. 2 (p. 61 f.). 



128 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Etheredge and Wycherley, it will be re- 
membered, got their first notion of Moliere's 
comedy of manners from Les Precieuses Rid- 
icules, where most of the piece is filled with 
conversation that serves only to ridicule the 
cult of preciosity. That was what the play 
existed for. There was only so much plot 
as was necessary to effect that purpose. 
Congreve was not only a greater artist than 
his predecessors in England, but he had the 
advantage of studying Moliere's masterpieces 
from the start, so that his satirical passages 
were handled more skilfully than those of 
Wycherley and Etheredge. His love of word- 
play, to be sure, led him to endow his minor 
characters, the servants in particular, with 
too much brilliant wit, but in general his satire, 
frequently as it might suspend the action, had 
some more or less obvious relation to character 
and purpose. Indeed, his copy of the scene 
from Le Misanthrope just referred to was 
managed better even than in the original, for 
while in Moliere the other persons merely 
furnished suggestions for the sharpness of 
Celimene's wit, in Congreve there was a give 
and take in the dialogue that was more dra- 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 129 

matic. A better illustration of the thorough- 
ness with which Congreve learned his lesson 
may be found in Love for Love, where Valentine 
is trying to secure his inheritance from his 
father. This should be compared with the 
scene in UAvare where Maitre Simon, who has 
been acting as agent for the father, Harpagon, 
in putting money out to usury, and for the son, 
Cleante, in trying to effect a loan, brings the 
two together without knowing their relation- 
ship. A single reading shows that the con- 
versation in the two passages is managed in 
the same way.^ Each scene lights up the 
character of father and son, advances the 
action a little, and is at the same time a keen 
satire on miserliness. 

The method of Etheredge and Wycherley, 
however, was the one followed by the vast 
majority of Restoration plajrwrights. In this 
matter the influence of Moliere was far more 
pervasive than in the features of his structure 
previously considered. There was hardly a 
man who would not pause in the busiest in- 
trigue to limn a sketch from Co vent Garden 

1 Cf, Love jor Love, ii. 1 (p. 228 ff.), and UAvare, 
ii. 2. 



130 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

or some popular tavern. For it was no secret 
that a playgoer's attention could frequently be 
caught sooner by a scene which he recognized 
or thought he recognized than by the greatest 
briskness of movement. 

A third and last result of Moliere's center- 
ing his interest on character more than on 
plot was the kind of solutions he found for 
his intrigues. In Les Femmes Savantes the 
impossible suitor is frightened away by a pre- 
tended loss of wealth. Le Tartuffe is ended 
by the intervention of the King. In UAvare 
a long-lost father returns to lead the loving 
pairs into each other's arms. MoUere was 
almost obliged to bring about the conclusion 
by such extraneous means, because his char- 
acters were always fixed types, men who were 
subject to no gradual development or great 
moral revolution. There is nothing more 
characteristic of Harpagon than his conduct 
in the last scene of UAvare. There is no 
possible ending to the schemes of Tartuffe 
so satisfying to our emotions or so appropriate 
to the characters as the one Mohere has 
devised. The fault with his denouements is 
not that they are inconsistent with the play, 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 131 

but that they are not always carefully evolved 
from its inner structure. 

English dramatists noticed this feature of 
MoHere's plots, but they naturally regarded 
it as a fault. I have already shown how 
Medbourne in his translation prepared for 
the overthrow of Tartuffe by the introduction 
of a legal document. Crowne, who adapted 
the main features of the French play, deferred 
the unmasking scene to the last act and utilized 
it to bring about the conclusion. But the 
denouement of most plays of the period is of 
the intrigue type, where the misunderstand- 
ings and cases of mistaken identity are all 
explained, for such endings were necessary 
to clear up the confusions of the plot. 

This survey makes it clear that Mohere 
had a very slight influence on the plot-structure 
of Restoration comedy. The English drama- 
tists were not profound and penetrating 
psychologists, so that his methods were 
entirely out of keeping with their aims. The 
only pervasive influence was the tendency 
to interrupt the movement in order to linger 
over scenes from contemporary life, and that 
influence was not the result of direct imita- 



132 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

tion, but of the interest Moliere had started 
in the recognition of scenes from daily life 
as a source of popular appeal. The smallness 
of the influence on structure is entirely ex- 
plained by the facts given in the last chap- 
ter on the general attitude toward Moliere. 
Even in composing comedies of intrigue the 
playwrights did not study the Frenchman's 
lighter work. These men were not eager 
and fastidious artists cherishing lofty ideals 
for the drama and poring over the greatest 
models in hope of attaining some far-off 
perfection. They were practical playwrights 
working for the approval of a narrow coterie 
or the commercial reward of popular success. 
They did the practical thing of trying their 
best to please their audience, and they were 
in no doubt concerning the tastes of that 
audience. One of the characters in Ether- 
edge is given a remark that explains both the 
life and the drama of the period : — 

A single intrigue in love is as dull as a single plot in 
a play, and will tire a lover worse than t'other does an 
audience.^ 

1 She Would if She Could, iii. 1 (p. 161). 



CHAPTER VI 

CHARACTER 

The demand of Restoration audiences for 
several lines of action is to some extent ex- 
plained by the prevailing interest in variety 
of character. Seeing nothing but the super- 
ficial side of life, those audiences got tired 
of watching the same persons come upon the 
stage time and again. The playwrights found 
it much easier to borrow characters than to 
invent them, and they discovered that Moliere 
was one of the most convenient sources for 
borrowings. A great deal of this adaptation 
was made with no attempt to preserve the 
spirit of the original. I need not advert to 
the treatment of character in Lacy or Ravens- 
croft. The ordinary treatment of Moliere's 
conceptions may be observed in Shadwell's 
Bury Fair, the main stratagem and chief 
characters of which were taken from Les 
Precieuses Ridicules. Wildish, a fine gentle- 
man from London who has come to Bury to 
133 



134 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

seek his beloved, conceives the idea of passing 
off his peruke-maker as a count on two rustic 
blue-stockings, Lady Fantast and her daughter, 
not because he has been rejected as a lover, 
but because their affectation disgusts him.^ 
This pretended count in his conversation 
makes reference to army experiences,^ as 
Mascarille and Jodelet do ; he has the ladies 
try the scent of his powdered peruke,^ as 
Mascarille does ; and at one point he is cudg- 
eled ^ as the French servants are. That is 
pretty close imitation of externals, but none 
of the peruke-maker's dialogue with Lady 
Fantast and her daughter, though fully as 
affected as that of the French valets, is trans- 
lated or paraphrased from Mohere. As La 
Roche is a copy of Mascarille and Jodelet, 
so Lady Fantast and her daughter, Mrs. 
Fantast, are copies of Madelon and Cathos, 
but their special affectation is the French lan- 

1 Bury Fair, i (pp. 137-139). Cf. Les Precieuses 
Ridicules, sc. 1. 

2 Ibid., ii (p. 155). Cf. Les Precieuses Ridicules, 
sc. 11. 

3 Ibid., iii (p. 180). Cf. Les Precieuses Ridicules, 
sc. 9. 

* Ibid., iv (p. 195 f.). Cf. Les Precieuses Ridicules, 
sc. 13. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 135 

guage rather than heroic romances. This ele- 
ment of the original satire is preserved, how- 
ever, in the conversation of the country fop, 
Trim, with Mrs. Fantast, in which they dis- 
play their reading of heroic romances by ad- 
dressing each other as Dorinda and Eugenius. 
Compared with Moliere these figures are lack- 
ing in comic force, but judged by the work of 
contemporary playwrights the satire is found 
to be much better adapted to English con- 
ditions, and the figures accordingly more ap- 
propriate in an English drama, than was usually 
the case with such borrowing. 

There was, however, another class of bor- 
rowed characters in which a good deal of the 
spirit of Moliere was preserved. One of the 
most famous figures in all Restoration comedy 
is an instance. Sir Fopling Flutter is the 
most airily graceful of Restoration fops, has 
the most delightfully fastidious taste and the 
most affected fine manners. He owes these 
qualities not solely to the lightness and gaiety 
of Sir George Etheredge himself. He owes 
them in no sUght degree to the Mascarille of 
Les Precieuses Ridicules. Certainly the au- 
thor after having seen Moliere in this role 



136 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

in Paris could never forget the experience. 
It was perfectly natiiral, therefore, that Ether- 
edge should transfer the character to one 
of his own comedies when social conditions 
had developed a similar degree of foppery in 
England. So much of the original was re- 
tained in the transference that one can be 
in no doubt concerning the method. Fopling's 
attempt to dance ^ and his later attempt to 
sing 2 were clearly in imitation of Mascarille's 
vanity,^ but the most suggestive passage is 
one exhibiting his finical attention to matters 
of dress. 

[Lady Townley, Emilia, Mr. Medley, Dorimant, 
Sir Fopling Flutter.] 

Lady Town. He's very fine. 

Emil. Extreme proper. 

Sir Fop. A slight suit I made to appear in at my 
first arrival, not worthy your consideration, ladies. 

Dor. The pantaloon is very well mounted. 

Sir Fop. The tassels are new and pretty. 

Med. I never saw a coat better cut. 

Sir Fop. It makes me show long-waisted, and, I 
think, slender. 

^ Sir Fopling Flutter, iv. 1 (p. 327). 

2 Ibid., iv. 2 (p. 338). 

3 Les Precieuses Ridicules, so. 9. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 137 

Dor, That's the shape our ladies dote on. 

Med. Your breech, though, is a handful too high in 
my eye, Sir Fopling. 

Sir Fop. Peace, Medley ; I have wished it lower a 
thousand times, but a pox on't, 'twill not be. 

Lady Town. His gloves are well fringed, large and 
graceful. 

Sir Fop. I always was eminent for being bien-gante. 

Emil. He wears nothing but what are originals of 
the most famous hands in Paris. 

Sir Fop. You are in the right, madam. 

Lady Town. The suit? 

Sir Fop. Barroy. 

Emil. The garniture? 

Sir Fop. Le Gras. 

Med. The shoes? 

Sir Fop. Piccat. 

Dor. The periwig ? 

Sir Fop. Chedreux. 

Lady Town, and Emil. The gloves ? 

Sir Fop. Orangerie : you know the smell, ladies. 
Dorimant, I could find in my heart for an amusement 
to have a gallantry with some of our English ladies.^ 

[Magdelon, Cathos, Mascarille.] 

Mas. Que vous semble de ma petite-oie? La 
trouvez-vous congruante a Thabit? 
Cath. Tout a fait. 
Mas. Le ruban est bien choisi. 

^ Sir Fopling Flutter, iii. 2 (p. 297 f.). 



138 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Mag. Furieusement bien. C'est Perdrigeon tout 
pur. 

Mas. Que dites-vous de mes canons? 

Mag. lis ont tout a fait bon air. 

Mas. Je puis me vanter au moins qu'ils ont un grand 
quartier plus que tous ceux qu'on fait. 

Mag. II faut avouer que je n'ai jamais vu porter si 
haut Telegance de I'ajustement. 

Mas. Attachez un peu sur ces gants la reflexion de 
votre odorat. 

Mag. lis sentent terriblement bon. 

Cath. Je n'ai jamais respire une odeur mieux con- 
ditionnee. 

Mas. Et celle-la? [II donne a sentir les cheveux 
poudres de sa perruque.] 

Mag. Elle est tout a fait de quality ; le sublime en 
est touche delicieusement. 

Mas. Vous ne me dites rien de mes plumes : com- 
ment les trouvez-vous ? 

Cath. Effroyablement belles. 

Mas. Savez-vous que le brin me cotlte un louis d'or? 
Pour moi, j'ai cette manie de vouloir donner gen^rale- 
ment sur tout ce qu'il y a de plus beau. 

Mag. Je vous assure que nous sympathisons vous 
et moi : j 'ai une delicatesse f urieuse pour tout ce que 
je porte ; et jusqu'a mes chaussettes, je ne puis rien 
souffrir qui ne soit de la bonne ouvriere.^ 

Obvious as the borrowing is, the adap- 
tation was so complete that the audience 

* Les Precieuses Ridicules, so. 9. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 139 

thought they recognized in more than one 
dandy of the courtly circle the original for 
Etheredge's conception/ The figure was, in 
fact, so good a reflection of contemporary life 
that Crowne and Gibber and Vanbrugh, to 
mention the most noteworthy imitators, 
helped to make it one of the most pleasant 
and characteristic comic types of the period. 
They failed to attain the lightness and grace 
of Etheredge's adaptation, partly because 
they had never absorbed the comic spirit of 
the Frenchman. For adaptations of this 
kind, one hardly need remark, were possible 
only to men who could in a degree assume 
MoUere's attitude of never-tiring delicate 
ridicule toward all things unreasonable. 

The consideration of these borrowings — 
both of the extremely small class which re- 
tained a good deal of Moliere's spirit and of 
the extremely large class in which little at- 
tention was paid to the integrity or the par- 
ticular effectiveness of the original — does not 
exhaust the question of influence. For such 
borrowings might be made quite independ- 
ently of any adoption of Moliere's peculiar 

1 Cf. Etheredge, p. xiv, note 1. 



140 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

methods of character-drawing. The author 
of Le Misanthrope, to be sure, was not a de- 
voted student of dramaturgic devices nor 
a clever exploiter of technical resources. But 
he spent considerable thought on the group- 
ing and contrasting of his characters, not only 
to heighten dramatic effectiveness, but also 
to emphasize the idea upon which each play 
was based. In praising his friend, Mignard, 
he noted that painter's noble arrangement 
of contrasted groups,^ a feature of painting 
not suggested by Du Fresnoy, the som-ce of 
several of his opinions.^ In his dramas 
he made notable use of contrast from the 
beginning. In Le Depit Amour eux, for in- 
stance, he employed the frequent Spanish de- 
vice for heightening comic effect by presenting 
the love affairs of a servant as a foil to those 
of the master. In VEcole des Maris he op- 
posed the severe Sganarelle to the indulgent 
Ariste, not only for clearer portrayal of char- 
acter, but to make the thesis of the play more 
prominent. Indeed, take any of Moliere's 
pieces that comes to hand, and you will find 

^ Cf. La Gloire du Val-de-grdce, I. 74. 
2 Cf. Moliere, (Euvres, ix. 518 ff., 540. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 141 

contrast utilized to render the comedy more 
effective, the characters more striking, and 
the idea of the play more unmistakable. 

The skill with which Moliere employed the 
device is so considerable that it would have 
been very strange if the Restoration drama- 
tists who thought him anything but a store- 
house of incidents had not seen it. But it is 
quite another matter to be able to trace his 
influence on so common a practice. Dry- 
den, with his keen and powerful intellect and 
his small native aptitude for the theater, paid 
more attention to technical matters than 
most plajrwrights of the time. In Limherham, 
for example, he arranged the characters in a 
very symmetrical pattern. Aldo, the open- 
hearted befriender of mistresses, is set over 
against Mrs. Saintly, the hypocritical keeper 
of a '^ boarding-house"; Brainsick, despising 
his wife, against Limberham, doting on his 
mistress ; the wheedling Mrs. Brainsick 
against the termagant Mrs. Tricksy ; Aldo's 
son, Woodall, a rake, against Mrs. Saintly's 
supposed daughter, the virtuous Pleasance ; 
even the servant Gervase, giving his master 
good counsel, against the maid Judith, obey- 



142 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

ing strictly her mistress's behests. Giles 
is the only unbalanced character in the whole 
play, and he is used merely to untie the knot 
at the close. Of course this is all very pretty 
in its geometrical regularity, but it affords 
no evidence of influence from Moliere's vital 
contrasts. 

Crowne was likewise too careful a workman 
to neglect the principle. In Sir Courtly Nice 
he made notable use of it to introduce satirical 
reahsm into the Spanish plot he was adapting. 
Hothead and Testimony, representing the 
royalist and Presbyterian parties, are brought 
into continual altercation, in which the heat 
of the one and the affected calnmess of the 
other present a very amusing spectacle. Even 
more effective is the contrast between the 
exquisite, super-refined Sir Courtly and the 
coarse, rude Surly. One feels that Crowne, 
a student of Moliere's characters, was under 
his influence in thus making contrast serve 
his satirical purpose as well as the heightening 
of comic effect. In the case of Wycherley 
imitation is as certain as such matters can be. 
He not only made his contrasts sharp and 
complete, but in giving the persons opposing 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 143 

views of life he contrived to enforce the more 
or less definite thesis of his play. The ve- 
hemence of his temperament and the well- 
recognized tastes of an English audience com- 
bined to rob his contrasts of restraint, but 
the result in every case gives one the impres- 
sion that the brilliant Englishman was merely 
trying to improve on the methods of MoHere. 
The dissimilarity between such roles as the 
ridiculously jealous Pinch wife and the ridic- 
ulously trustful Sparkish, or the excessively 
rough Manly and the excessively complaisant 
Plausible, even though less natural than that 
between Sganarelle and Ariste, was, I feel 
sure, drawn in imitation of the French master. 
I hardly need add that such a statement can 
be made of very few dramatists of the period. 
In the drawing of individual character 
Moliere displayed peculiarities that may at 
first puzzle an English reader. At any rate, 
the coloring he gave to his dramatis personce 
was misunderstood by such a considerable 
critic as Hazlitt.^ Moliere, however, knew 
exactly what he was about. He was not a 
Uterary student poring over dramatic master- 
1 Cf . Hazlitt, Works, viii. 28 f. 



144 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

pieces in an endeavor to emulate the poetic 
beauties of the classics. He was an actor, 
probably the greatest comic actor of his time. 
He was stage-manager and producer and 
advertiser of all the plays brought out by 
his company. He therefore was perfectly 
familiar with the demands of presentation 
in a theater. He knew that the playgoer 
has no time to study out the subtle signifi- 
cance of a trait of character or the esoteric 
meaning of a polished speech. He knew, 
moreover, that to be impressive character 
and incidents cannot be presented in the hum- 
drum manner of everyday hfe. Recently 
a student who was serving as supernumerary 
in a famous opera performed in New York 
City, stood behind the scenes to watch one 
of the best actors on the operatic stage. ^^He 
was painted Hke a savage and grinned like 
an idiot," the student declared afterward. 
But that coloring and that grimace impressed 
on the audience the anguish of a tragic mo- 
ment when the music was yearning like a god 
in pain. So Moliere in his character-drawing, 
in order to impress on the audience his con- 
ception of a person, exaggerated traits beyond 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 145 

what would be manifested on the street or in 
the home. This principle accounts for the 
almost farcical coloring given to Harpagon 
in L'Avare. The miser is so much interested 
in his search for valuables on the person of 
a servant that he demands to see still other 
hands after La Fleche has already shown 
both right and left.^ At the end of the act 
he exclaims with delight, after listening to a 
declaration that money is more precious than 
youth, beauty, birth, wisdom, or uprightness : 
^'Ah, what a fine fellow! That was spoken 
like an oracle. Happy is the man with a ser- 
vant of that kind !" ^ The same method is 
employed in his most serious and realistic 
dehneations. Tartuffe enters on the scene 
for the first time giving directions to his serv- 
ant : ''Laurent, put away my hair shirt and 
my scourge, and pray that heaven may always 
light your pathway. If any one calls for 
me, say that I am visiting the prisoners to 
share with them what Httle alms I have 
received.^' ^ 

1 VAvare, i. 3. 

^Ihid., i. 5. 

3Le Tartuffe, iii. 2. 

L 



146 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

This footlight shading is a conspicuous 
feature of MoHere's character-drawing, but it 
is no more distinctive of his art than the use 
of contrast. Every playwright who has any 
practical knowledge of theatrical require- 
ments finds such coloring necessary. The 
presence of dramatic heightening in Restora- 
tion comedy is nevertheless in many cases 
to be ascribed to the influence of Mohere, 
because the borrowing of his characters was 
frequent, and it was much harder to keep 
from observing his method in individual de- 
lineations than in the arrangement of groups. 
Two illustrations will suffice. Crowne con- 
stantly employed it in a way to remind one 
of the French genius. Sir Thomas Rash in 
The Country Wit makes statements like the 
following threat to his daughter : — 

Sir Mannerly will be in town to-morrow, and to- 
morrow he shall marry you before he sleeps, nay, before 
his boots are off, nay, before he lights off his horse; 
he shall marry you a horse-back but he shall marry you 
to-morrow/ 

One immediately recalls Orgon's infatuation 
for the hypocrite : — 

' The Country Wit, i. (p. 20). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 147 

II m'enseigne a n'avoir affection pour rien, 

De toutes amities il detache mon ame ; 

Et je verrois mourir frere, enfants, mere et femme, 

Que je m'en soucierois autant que de cela.* 

Other passages, such as the speeches of Lord 
Stately in The English Friar, or of Sir Courtly 
in Sir Courtly Nice, contain the same kind of 
exaggeration that Moliere adopted to bring 
his figures into proper perspective before an 
audience. 

In Wycherley, too, the influence is obvious. 
In Love in a Wood Mrs. Crossbite praises 
Dapperwit to the procuress, Mrs. Joyner, 
but as soon as the latter proposes a better 
^^ keeper" for her daughter Lucy, she exclaims : 
^^D'ye hear, daughter, Mrs. Joyner has satis- 
fied me clearly ; Dapperwit is a vile fellow, 
and, in short, you must put an end to that 
scandalous famiharity between you.'' ^ j^ 
is the voice of Geronte, who, when he learns 
that Leandre has inherited a large fortune, 
suddenly desists from his violent opposition : 
'^Monsieur, votre vertu m'est tout a fait 
considerable, et je vous donne ma fille avec 

1 Le Tartuffe, i. 5. 

2 Love in a Wood, iii. 1 (p. 57). 



148 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

la plus grande joie du monde." ^ Numerous 
little touches like this show that Wycherley 
in his exaggerations was imitating the method 
of Moliere. But in this matter as much as 
in the use of contrast the Englishman thought 
it necessary to improve on his model. Olivia 
in The Plain Dealer, though borrowed from 
Le Misanthrope, is portrayed too glaringly 
to win any credence. The affectation of 
Paris or Don Diego in The Gentleman Dancing 
Master is presented with so much exaggera- 
tion that neither of them is convincing. 
Indeed, all his leading persons are delineated 
with so Httle restraint that they give an im- 
pression of unreality not in keeping with the 
plays as wholes. 

A second characteristic of Moliere's de- 
lineations is that he never traces the de- 
velopment or unfolding of character. Even 
the dominating personahties in his most 
serious plays never change from the first 
scene to the last. Alceste after his rejection 
by Celimene remains the same champion of 
high ideals in conflict with the hypocritical 
society about him that he was in the open- 

1 Le Medecin malgre lui, iii. 11. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 149 

ing of the play in conversation with Oronte. 
The different scenes where he appears merely 
throw brighter hght upon one or another 
phase of his character. In a word, Moliere's 
characters are static. This is quite different 
from the method familiar to English students 
in Shakspere. Shakspere traces the develop- 
ment of ambition in the soul of Macbeth 
and the resulting deterioration of character, 
or the gradual awakening of jealousy in the 
mind of Othello and the terrible and pitiful 
consequences thereof. What Shakspere was 
interested in was the biography of a soul. 
His prevailing method was to study evolution, 
degeneration, change. 

One explanation of the difference is that 
MoHere was writing comedy. I think I have 
already made it clear that pure comedy is 
impossible wherever sympathy is aroused. 
Now intense sympathy is aroused by the 
spectacle of a soul's development. It is only 
static figures, where incongruities are salient, 
that are genuinely and consistently comic. 
Shakspere illustrates this as well as Moliere. 
No Ehzabethan audience ever found de- 
velopment in Touchstone or Bottom or 



150 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Dogberry. Unlike Shakspere, Moliere was 
always and everywhere following the methods 
of comedy. Even his most somber, sinister 
figure is not presented as tragic. Tartuffe, 
it is true, does not raise much laughter; he is 
not a strictly comic figure, but it would be 
a total misunderstanding of the play to sup- 
pose that he was intended to arouse tragic 
interest. 

A further explanation of why Mohere's 
figures are characterized by a lack of de- 
velopment is that he makes them typical, 
general; he founds them upon an idea. Shak- 
spere's are strictly individual and have 
general significance only because they are 
true to universal laws of being. But Moliere, 
it will be remembered, was writing in an age 
and country far different from Ehzabethan 
England. I need not repeat what I have 
previously said about the strong spirit of 
society which permeated the Paris of Louis 
XIV. I need not insist, either, on the strong 
classical ideals which dominated the literary 
circles of that time and found their most 
complete exemplification in the drama. 
Every one understands that ancient models 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 151 

and the new unities were equally hostile to 
Shakspere's biographic interest in character. 
French society was certainly in complete 
contrast with the worship of individualism 
that saturated the London of Elizabeth and 
with the spirit of revolt from all classic con- 
straints that animated the young poets of 
her reign. The French spirit of society and 
classicism and the English love of the indi- 
vidual and the irregular could not but get 
themselves expressed in the drama of the two 
periods. But more important for Mohere's 
character-drawing was the influence of the 
commedia delV arte. The masks of the Italians, 
though reaUstic enough in their origin, were for 
the French nothing but general types vivified 
by the histrionic genius of successive actors. 
Moliere's servants and lovers and old men 
were at first merely brilliant specimens of 
the Itahan mask. That is, he formed his 
method of character-drawing by imitation 
of general types, and that method, gradually 
modified by his developing genius, he 
employed throughout his career. But the 
method was peculiarly suited to his tempera- 
ment. I have aheady emphasized the clarity 



152 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

of his thinking, the dominance of reason over 
fancy in his sense of comedy, the submission 
of all details to a controlling idea in his con- 
struction of plot. The same mental attitude 
determined his character-drawing. His char- 
acters were founded on an idea. Harpagon 
presents many a facet of avarice. Tartuffe 
has become the synonym for hypocrisy. Le 
Misanthrope has been considered a modern 
form of the medieval '' morality" with its 
group of personified abstractions. This is 
a very grievous exaggeration, to be sure, but 
it illustrates an essential difference between 
/ Moliere and Shakspere. Mohere has all 
the interest in general ideas and the love of 
lucidity characteristic of the French. Shak- 
spere was interested in searching out the 
secrets of personality and exploring all the 
mysterious corners of the individual soul. 
His creations have the complexity of life, 
and are often more baffling than any of our 
acquaintances. Moliere presented a simpli- 
fied transcript from life. His characters 
revealed the dominance of an idea connected 
with the theme upon which the play was 
based. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 153 

Moliere^s method of character-drawing sug- 
gests Ben Jonson's theory of humors. Both 
men adopted an intellectual simplification 
of life, as opposed to the rich imaginative 
imitation to be found in Shakspere. Jon- 
son, like Moliere, centered his interest on the 
dominating characteristic of each person. 
In late life, to be sure, he carried the method 
to a bare and lifeless allegory, but in his best 
work he produced figures, such as Bobadil, 
that must have been as convincing on the 
stage as the valiant Nym or mine ancient 
Pistol. Where, then, it may be asked, Hes 
the difference between Jonson and Mohere? 
The difference is not so much in the method 
of presenting character as in the men who 
used the method. Jonson surely had a strong 
intellect and a gift for shrewd observation. 
He filled out his conceptions with all the 
realism necessary for rendering the characters 
convincing behind the footlights. But when 
subjected to the analysis of the study, the 
product remains rather thin in comparison 
not only with Shakspere, but with Moliere. 
For Mohere as well as Shakspere had a pene- 
trating imagination. He, too, created char- 



154 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

acters that are individual, though he was at 
the same time careful to show them as typical. 
He presented the large, fat Tartuffe, with his 
florid complexion and enormous appetite 
and domineering manners. He dehneated 
the passionately sincere Alceste, who yet has 
the urbanity of a courtier, and, by a stroke of 
genius which preserved some of the inconsis- 
tency of life, had him love the most elegantly 
coquettish mistress of a fashionable salon. 
Mohere never devoted a play to the fate 
brooding over human life nor to the destiny 
that awaits man hereafter. He was inter- 
ested in this world. But he had the gift of 
imagination to create characters as living, 
as human, as true to life as he saw it, as any 
in Shakspere. His peculiarity is that his 
imagination was always subject to the control 
of intellect, that in imitating life he always 
simplified so as to make his characters un- 
mistakably typical. 

This method of delineating static and tjq^i- 
cal characters based on an idea is intimately 
related to Moliere's conception of comedy, 
which was that it should correct the follies 
and foibles of men, and particularly of the 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 155 

men of his time.^ One might therefore expect 
that the method would be adopted in England 
only so far as the basic conception was shared 
by the EngUsh playwrights. A few concrete 
comparisons will bear out the supposition. 
The case of Wycherley, who did as much as 
Etheredge to establish Mohere's kind of 
comedy in England, is typical. In UEcole 
des Femmes, which we know he studied, 
Arnolphe is a man who places ridiculous 
emphasis on securing a faithful wife. It is 
the incongruity between his methods and the 
dictates of reason that Moliere makes the 
source of all the comic effect he draws from 
this character. Every precaution he takes 
to attain his object serves only to render him 
ridiculous. The servants he has selected as 
best suited to protect the innocence of his in- 
tended wife are a source of untold annoyance; 
the simplicity of Agnes, upon which he 
chiefly relies, in a dozen ways helps to defeat 
his aims ; and his own active efforts near 
the close have no result but to secure Agnes 
to her lover, Horace. This method Wycher- 
ley followed only in part. In The Country 

^ Cf. Le Tartuffe : Preface, Premier Placet. 



156 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Wife Pinch wife is an excessively jealous hus- 
band whose jealousy at every point brings 
on the fate he fights against. Yet even when 
Wycherley was using a suggestion from 
Moliere he did not always restrict himself 
to this method of developing the character 
from some basal incongruity. Paris in The 
Gentleman Dancing Master is based on the 
Sganarelle of UEcole des Maris. A good part 
of the comic effect is accordingly produced 
by the contradiction between what he thinks 
he is accomplishing and what he actually ac- 
complishes : he thinks he is making his rival 
Gerrard utterly ridiculous when he is in reality 
making a complete fool of himself. But this 
is not the only source of humor in his character ; 
he also gives rise to laughter by his absurd 
aping of French manners. In his original 
characters Wycherley came no nearer the 
method. Sparkish in The Country Wife, for 
instance, has some resemblance to Paris ; he 
thinks he is a great wit when he is a perfect 
wittol. Still, this incongruity is not the only 
feature emphasized, for Sparkish is also made 
to serve as an antithesis to jealous Pinch wife. 
The use of such distracting additions is on 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 157 

reflection seen to be the logical outcome of 
the failure to adopt MoUere's plot-structure : 
since Wycherley introduced no central thesis 
controlling all parts of the play, there was no 
necessity for his developing each comic char- 
acter from a basal incongruity related to 
the central thesis. He was free to combine 
in a single role as many sources of comic 
effect as he chose. 

Dryden, who was led to a realization of 
Moliere's conception through the success of 
Wycherley and Etheredge, after 1671 drew 
characters in somewhat the same way. The 
comic underplot of Marriage a la Mode, as 
I have remarked before, showed that Dryden 
had been studying Moliere carefully. Not 
only Melantha, a very clever adaptation, 
but the original figures, Doralice and Rho- 
dophil, were developed from a central in- 
congruity, though it must be confessed the 
characters do not all enforce the idea of the 
sub-plot as a whole. In some plays it is a 
minor action that embodies the satiric pur- 
pose. The character of Judge Gripus, the 
third person in the Mercury-Phaedra intrigue 
in Amphitryon, was in all Ukelihood a satire on 



158 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

well-known practices of the bench, and the 
intrigue between the god and the maid could 
have been paralleled in the society of the time. 
Such killing of two birds with one stone was a 
renunciation of Moliere's method of variously 
illustrating a central idea. It was therefore 
only in part that Dry den employed Moliere's 
method of character development. He no- 
where invented his action and depicted his 
persons to explain or enforce a controlling 
idea, and even in the dehneation of individual 
borrowed roles he followed at a considerable 
distance the master's development of a central 
incongruity. 

In this matter Crowne was a better work- 
man. The plot of The English Friar was 
adapted from Le Tartuffe in order to satirize 
the power of the church under James II. 
Crowne, of course, had no difficulty in fitting 
the figures from that play into the demands 
of the English satire, but when we find Harpa- 
gon from UAvare appearing as Lady Pinchgut 
we think the author has merely yielded to 
the common English demand for many per- 
sons. He certainly reproduces the comic 
incongruity of the original. Lady Pinchgut's 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 159 

starving the servants/ keeping the liveries 
under key except when needed for special 
occasions/ reducing her horses to skeletons 
by locking the oats up in her closet/ making 
her household observe all the fasts of the 
church ^ — all these revelations by the coach- 
man are reminiscences or variations from 
UAvare.^ The relations between master and 
servants in the original, with raihngs on one 
side and frequent impertinence on the other, 
are also reproduced in the English imitation. 
But Lady Pinchgut is introduced not merely 
to lend variety to the dramatis personce. 
Crowne makes the role serve his purpose of 
exposing the power of the priesthood as com- 
pletely as he adapts the plot of Le Tartuffe 
to the same purpose. 

His case merely furnishes one more illus- 
stration of the general statement that it was 
only in so far as a Restoration playwright 
adopted Moliere's conception of comedy 

1 The English Friar, p. 46. 

2 Ibid., p. 45. 

3 Ibid., p. 65. 

4 Ibid., p. 113. 

* In particular, cf. VAvare, iii. 1 , especially the speech 
of Maitre Jacques at the end of the scene. 



160 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

that he followed the Frenchman's method of 
drawing character. In other words, the large 
class of dramatists who in borrowing concep- 
tions paid little attention to the integrity 
or peculiar effectiveness of the original were 
not influenced by Moliere's employment of 
contrast in the grouping of dramatis personce 
and, in the delineation of individual persons, 
by his method of dramatic heightening and 
of developing typical figures, founded on an 
idea, to carry out the theme of a play as a 
whole. Such influence was felt only by the 
small class who sought to retain or reproduce 
the spirit of Moliere's comedy. 



CHAPTER VII 

DIALOGUE 

Not only can audiences determine the 
kind of plots a dramatist shall "construct and ^ 
the types of character he shall present, but 
they can influence, not very deeply perhaps, 
but nevertheless unmistakably, the style of 
dialogue he shall write. For though style 
is rightly considered the expression of indi- 
vidual temperament, external features have 
always been introduced in accordance with 
the pecuhar likes and dislikes of the playgoer. 
Such an external feature is the lubricity which 
has almost become synonymous with Restora- 
tion dialogue. Not only were the ephemeral 
playwrights willing to insert passages having 
no attraction but their indecency, but some 
of the most sparkling wit of the leaders played ^:^„ 
around subjects now no longer alluded to in re- 
fined society. I need dwell on this notorious 
characteristic no longer than I have on the 

M 161 



162 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

delight in amorous intrigues. It is already 
indelibly stamped on every man's memory. 
Besides, it has absolutely nothing to do with 
Moliere's influence. 

There is, however, some very tangible evi- 
dence of his influence in the dialogue of the 
leading dramatists. A recurrent feature of 
his plays is the passages of lively staccato 
conversation which were possibly a remi- 
niscence of the lazzi indulged in by the actors 
of the commedia delV arte. Such passages 
are at any rate totally opposed to the love of 
reasoning and long speeches characteristic of 
French drama. Etheredge was apparently 
impressed by the gaiety and sprightliness of 
those conversations when vivified by the con- 
summate acting of Moliere in Les Predeuses 
Ridicules.^ The opening of his first play 
bears witness to the impression. 

[Clark, servant to Lord Beaufort, and Dufoy, French 
valet to Sir Frederick, are speaking.] 

Clark. Good-morrow, monsieur. 
Duf. Good-mor', — good-mor'. 
Clark. Is Sir Frederick stirring ? 
Duf. Pox sturre him6. 

1 On Moliere's acting, cf. Larroumet, p. 358 ff. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 163 

Clark. My lord has sent me — 
Duj. Begar, me vil have de reveng^ ; me vil no 
stay two day in Englande. 

Clark. Good monsieur, what's the matter ? 

Duj. De matre ! de matre is easy to be perceive.^ 

Throughout the piece the device was repeated 
time and again. 

[The Bailiffs enter as Sir Frederick, Sir Nicholas, 
and Wheedle are talking.] 

Bailiffs. We arrest you, sir. 

Wheed. Arrest me ? Sir Frederick, Sir Nicholas ! 

Sir Fred. We are not provided for a rescue at pres- 
ent, sir. 

Wheed. At whose suit ? 

Bailiffs. At Sir Frederick Frollick's. 

Wheed. Sir Frederick Frollick's ? I owe him never 
a farthing. 

Sir Fred. You're mistaken, sir; you owe me a 
thousand pounds.^ 

Staccato dialogue was in MoUere frequently- 
combined with repetition almost to the ex- 
tent of becoming a mannerism. Possibly 
that fact explains why the feature crept into 
Congreve's dialogue, for he had an ideal of 
style directly opposed to Moliere's. He never- 
theless imitated this particular mannerism 

1 Love in a Tub, i. 1 (p. 7). 

2 Ibid., V. 4 (p. 107). 



164 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

in more than one passage. The similarities 
in the following excerpts render extended com- 
ment unnecessary. 

[Scandal, Foresight.1 

Scan. You are not satisfied that you act justly. 

Fore. How? 

Scan. You are not satisfied, I say. — I am loath 
to discourage you — but it is palpable that you are not 
satisfied. 

Fore. How does it appear, Mr. Scandal? I think 
I am very well satisfied. 

Scan. Either you suffer yourseK to deceive yourself ; 
or you do not know yourself. 

Fore. Pray explain yourself. 

Scan. Do you sleep well o' nights ? 

Fore. Very well. 

Scan. Are you certain ? you do not look so. 

Fore. I am in health, I think. 

Scan. So was Valentine this morning ; and looked 
just so. 

Fore. How ! am I altered any way ? I don't per- 
ceive it. 

Scan. That may be, but your beard is longer than 
it was two hours ago. 

Fore. Indeed ! bless me ! ^ 

[Du Bois, Alceste.] 
Ale. Ah ! que d'amusement ! 

1 Love for Love, iii. 4 (p. 255 f.). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 165 

Veux-tu parler ? 

Du B. Monsieur, il faut faire retraite. 

Ale. Comment? 

DuB. II faut d'ici deloger sans trompette. 

Ale. Et pourquoi ? 

Bu B. Je vous dis qu'il faut quitter ce lieu. 

Ale. La cause ? 

Du B. II faut partir, Monsieur, sans dire adieu. 

Ale. Mais par quelle raison me tiens-tu ce langage ? 

Du B. Par la raison. Monsieur, qu'il faut plier bagage. 

Ale. Ah ! je te casserai la tete assurement. 

Si tu ne veux, maraud, t'expliquer autrement/ 

More conscious imitation of the device 
appears in Crowne, who studied the French- 
man's dialogue more carefully than any other 
dramatist of the period. Even in plays con- 
taining no adapted scenes or borrowed char- 
acters he frequently imitated the repetition 
of Mohere. City Politics furnishes a typical 
illustration, as a comparison with a well- 
known scene in UAvare will show. 

[PiETRO is talking with the Podesta.] 

Piet. . . . Great honours, to my knowledge, are 
design' d you : no less than the high office of Lord 
Treasurer. 

Pod. Lord Treasurer ? 

1 Le Misanthrope, iv. 4. 



166 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Piet. Sir, I speak what I know ; 'twill be some time 
before you come to it ; and the Viceroy will expect you 
to sacrifice to him the doctor, bricklayer, Florio — 

Pod. Ay, and my father, too, if he were alive ; and 
shou'd hang 'em all. Lord Treasurer ! 

Piet. I hope, my lord, you won't refuse some oaths 
— and — 

Pod. Nothing ! I'll refuse nothing, sir, for such 
honour as this. Lord Treasurer ! 

Piet. I'll acquaint his highness with your arrival. 
You must be willing to suffer some attendance, the com- 
mon affliction of all courtiers. 

Pod. I'll do or suffer anything for so much glory 
as this Lord Treasurer ! 

Piet. Your most humble servant, my lord ! 

[Exit Piet. 

Pod. Your most humble servant, sir. Lord Treas- 
urer ! to what grandeur am I rising ? ^ 

[Harpagon, Valere.] 

Harp. ... II s'engage k la prendre sans dot. 

Val. Sans dot? 

Harp. Oui. 

Val. Ah! je ne dis plus rien. Voyez-vous? voila 
une raison tout a fait convaincante ; il se f aut rendre a 
cela. 

Harp. C'est pour moi une epargne considerable. 

Val. Assur^ment, cela ne regoit point de contradic- 
tion. II est vrai que votre fiUe vous pent repr^senter 

1 City Politics, v. (p. 196 f.). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 167 

que le mariage est une plus grande affaire qu'on ne put 
croire ; . • . 

Harp. Sans dot. 

Vol. Vous avez raison : voila qui decide tout, cela 
s'entend. II y a des gens qui pourroient vous dire 
qu'en de telles occasions Tinclination d'une fiUe est une 
chose sans doute ou Ton doit avoir de regard ; . . . 

Har-p. Sans dot. 

Vol. Ah ! il n'y a pas de r^plique a cela : on le sait 
bien ; qui diantre pent aller la contre ? Ce n'est pas 
qu'il n'y ait quantity de peres qui aimeroient mieux 
menager la satisfaction de leur fiUes que I'argent qu'ils 
pourroient donner ; . . . 

Harp. Sans dot. 

Val. II est vrai : cela fenne la bouche a tout, sans 
dot. Le moyen de r^sister a une raison comme celle- 
la?^ 

Another device in Moliere's dialogue was 
the employment of dramatic irony in qui- 
pro-quo situations. Of course nothing is 
more frequent in Spanish comedies of intrigue 
than equivoke. Half the situations are the 
result of mistakes and misunderstandings. 
Indeed, it was from the Spanish and the Italian 
that Moliere borrowed the device. But his 
treatment of it can easily be distinguished 
from that typical of the comedy of intrigue. 

1 UAvare. i. 5. 



168 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

In the latter all the humor comes from the 
situations — any other set of persons with 
the same relations would provide just as 
laughable a scene. In Moliere the peculiar 
traits of the characters taking part in the 
situation furnish half the comedy. Every 
one familiar with his masterpieces will rec- 
ognize this to be true, but traces of such 
treatment appear even in so early a play as 
Le Depit Amour eux. An examination of the 
qui-pro-quo scenes in The Gentleman Dancing 
Master will show that Wycherley in altering 
the dialogue of the Spanish play he was adapt- 
ing took hints from Moliere. The comic 
effectiveness of the following scene, for in- 
stance, depends to a very considerable extent 
on the character of Don Diego. 

[Gerrard, the lover, has been passed off on Don Diego, 
who prides himself on never beirig deceived, as a dancing 
master sent by Paris, who expects to marry Hippolita 
on the morrow.] 

Re-enter Don Diego. 

Don. Come, have you done ? 

Hip. 0, my father again ! 

Don. Come, now let us see you dance. 

Hip. Indeed I am not perfect yet : pray excuse me 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 169 

till the next time my master comes. But when must 
he come again, father? 

Don. Let me see — friend, you must needs come 
after dinner again, and then at night again, and so 
three times to-morrow too. If she be not married to- 
morrow, (which I am to consider of,) she will dance a 
corant in twice or thrice teaching more ; will she not ? for 
'tis but a twelve-month since she came from Hackney- 
school. 

Ger. We will lose no time, I warrant you, sir, if she 
be to be married to-morrow. 

Don. True, I think she may be married to-morrow ; 
therefore, I would not have you lose any time, look you. 

Ger. You need not caution me, I warrant you, sir. — 
Sweet scholar, your humble servant : I will not fail you 
immediately after dinner. 

Don. No, no, pray do not; and I will not fail to 
satisfy you very well, look you. 

Hip. He does not doubt his reward, father, for his 
pains. If you should not, I would make that good to him.^ 

Such conscious or unconscious reproduction 
of the devices of staccato effect, repetition, 
and dramatic irony was sporadic. The only 
dramatist whose dialogue was appreciably 
colored by imitation of Moliere was Crowne, 
and even in his case the coloring was faint. 
The explanation is that the dramatists who 

1 The Gentleman Dancing Master, ii. 2 (p. 170 f.). 



170 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

had any decided notions about dialogue held 
to an ideal directly opposed to Mohere's 
practice, and accordingly no more attempted 
to reproduce his style than they did his plot- 
structure. It should not be inferred, how- 
ever, that the brilliant wit of Restoration 
comedy was the result of English literary tra- 
dition. In fact, the influence of models 
was notable only in the case of John Dryden, 
and his models were not the pre-Restoration 
dramatists, but the metaphysical poets. He 
was in particular influenced by two of the 
leaders, — by Donne, who applied all the 
subtlety developed by an early scholastic 
education to the refinement of far-fetched 
metaphors and impossible hyperboles and 
labyrinths of paradoxical logic, and by Cowley, 
who escaped from the turmoil of rehgious wars 
and the more distracting confusions of chang- 
ing beliefs and wavering systems of thought 
into a world where he devoted himself to 
expressing metaphysical abstractions in all 
the novel, ingenious, and subtle images which 
his quick fancy and a talent for facile imita- 
tion provided. Dryden' s Astrea Redux con- 
tains metaphors as far-fetched as any in 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 171 

Donne, and his Annus Mirahilis vies with 
Cowley in the abundance of witty conceits. 
When Dryden forsook panegyrical verse for 
the more lucrative form of drama, he naturally 
retained some of this conception of style. 
This fact explains his definition of wit in 
comedy as sharpness of conceit ^ and his belief 
that the chief ornament of dialogue was 
repartee,^ a constant fusillade of similitudes, 
paradoxes, antitheses, phrased with the ut- 
most point to produce a brilliant impression. 
Examples of the device occur in his first play,^ 
but the liveliest dialogue in his comic writing 
is to be found in the tilts between Wildblood 
and Jacintha in An Evening^ s Love. A short 
passage will show how the conceit of the 
metaphysical poets has been transformed 
into dartling wit. 

Jac. I see there's no hope of reconcilement with you ; 
and therefore I give it over as desperate. 

Wild. You have gained your point, you have my 
money ; and I was only angry, because I did not know 
'twas you who had it. 

Jac. This will not serve your turn, sir : what I have 
got, I have conquered from you. 

1 Dryden, Works, iii. 244. 2 Ibid., p. 245. 

3 E.g., The Wild Gallant, ii. 1; iii. 2. 



172 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Wild. Indeed you use me like one that's conquered ; 
for you have plundered me of all I had. 

Jac. I only disarmed you, for fear you should rebel 
again ; for if you had the sinews of war, I am sure you 
would be flying out.^ 

It is indeed true that these tilts were in 
conception slightly influenced by the love 
quarrels in Le Depit Amour eux and Le Tartuffe. 
It is also true that Dryden borrowed a sur- 
prisingly large number of phrases and passages 
from Moliere. Some of these he utilized 
merely as characterizing speeches, but gen- 
erally there was some comparison involved 
which supplied him with one more simihtude to 
be displayed at the first opportunity. In Sga- 
narelle, for instance, he ran across this couplet : 

Ah ! que j'ai de depit que la loi n'autorise 

A changer de mari comme on fait de chemise ! ^ 

In The Maiden Queen he accordingly had 
Celadon say: — 

Yet, for my part, I can live with as few mistresses 
as any man. I desire no superfluities : only for neces- 
sary change or so, as I shift my hnen.^ 

1 An Evening's Love, iii. 1 (p. 315). 

2 Sganarelle, so. 5. 

3 The Maiden Queen, i. 2 (p. 428). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 173 

The dilution of thought in this case was, I 
think, intended to make the paradox more 
readily apprehensible by an English audience. 
But all this borrowing of suggestions and 
expansion of simihtudes does not indicate 
an influence from Moliere in Dryden's dia- 
logue. In Amphitryon his handling of the 
French betrays the metaphysical striving not 
only for novel comparisons, but for paradox 
and antithesis. No one would expect Dryden 
with his sense of style to change the admirable 
neatness and finish of the following passage: — 

Cle[anthis]. Merites-tu, pendard, cet insigne bonheur 
De te voir pour epouse une femme 
d'honneur ? 

Mer[cure]. Mon Dieu ! tu n'es que trop honnete : 
Ce grand honneur ne me vaut rien. 
Ne sois point si femme de bien, 
Et me romps un peu moins la tete.^ 

Yet what he actually did was to introduce 
more balance and antithesis in an effort to 
render the paradox more striking : — 

^rom[ia]. Thou deservest not to be yoked with a 
woman of honour, as I am, thou perjured villain. 
Merc[ury]. Ay, you are too much a woman of honour, 

1 Moliere's Amphitryon, i. 4. 



174 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

to my sorrow; many a poor husband would be glad 
to compound for less honour in his wife, and more quiet. 
Pr'ythee, be but honest and continent in thy tongue, 
and do thy worst with everything else about thee.^ 

It is clear enough that he had independent 
notions of dialogue which agreed ill with the 
style of Moliere. 

The forms of wit in Dryden's dialogue were 
therefore a modified continuation of the search 
for new and striking simihtudes and for antith- 
esis and paradox to be observed in Cowley 
and Donne, but the prominence he gave to 
wit must be ascribed to an entirely different 
cause, to the ideals of the coterie which con- 
trolled the society of the day, — that is, as 
I said in the beginning of the chapter, to the 
taste of the audience before whom he was to 
appear. Dryden himself leaves us in no 
doubt on this point. He tells us in An Essay 
on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age that 
the conversation of his time was much im- 
proved over the conversation of Ehzabethan 
times, that in his time 

the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled 

under a constrained, melancholy way of breeding, began 

^ Dryden's Amphitryon, ii. 2 (p. 50 f.). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 175 

first to display its force, by mixing the solidity of our 
nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This 
being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if the 
poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only 
persons in three kingdoms who should not receive ad- 
vantage by it; or, if they should not more easily imi- 
tate the wit and conversation of the present age than 
of the past/ 

What Dryden did not see was that the pe- 
culiar quality in the ^'air and gayety of our 
neighbors" was intimately related to the 
European movement of which Cowley and 
Donne and the whole metaphysical school 
were merely one manifestation. This is not 
the place to discuss the complex causes of the 
movement, which scholars have traced to 
literary forces and to political, social, and 
religious conditions.^ It is sufficient to note 
that it was dominant in Italy in the first half 
of the seventeenth century under the name of 
secentismo, reaching its best-known expres- 
sion in Marino, and that in France of the same 
period it assumed the form of preciosity. In 
both countries, as in England, the movement 
was characterized by a search for unexpected 

* Dryden, Works, iv. 241 f. 

2Cf. BeUoni, p. 456 ff.; Corradino. 



176 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

antitheses, striking paradoxes, and subtle 
or surprising comparisons. This search did 
not prevail only in literature. The man who 
possessed ''wit" was the social idol of the time. 
Marino was on his return from Paris escorted 
into his native city of Naples through an arch 
of triumph, accompanied by the shouting 
throngs of his fellow-citizens, who at once 
made him president of their academy. The 
worship of hel esprit among the fashionable 
circles of Paris is incomparably satirized 
in Les Precieuses Ridicules. One whole scene 
is taken up with the infatuation for beaux 
esprits and their enigmas, epigrams, and im- 
promptus. 

Now it is interesting to observe that the 
men who were to become the leaders in Res- 
toration social circles traveled extensively 
in those countries. Buckingham, before he 
was seventeen, had hved in Florence and 
Rome in as great state as the native princes,^ 
and subsequently passed several years at 
Paris in the vicinity of the Palais Royals.^ 
Rochester spent part of his youth in Italy,^ 

1 Cf. Burghelere, p. 21. 2 ji)id., pp. 68 f., 71. 

3 Cf . Burnet, p. 5. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 177 

and he told Burnet that his studies had been 
chiefly in 'Hhe Comical and witty Writings 
of the Ancients and Moderns/' 'Hhe Modern 
French and Italian as well as the EngUsh." ^ 
Dorset also traveled in Italy. I have already 
shown how familiar with French society 
Etheredge and Wycherley had become before 
beginning their dramatic career in London. 
It was this group of men, acquainted with 
the polished society of Italy and France and 
the prevalent worship of wit, that is, with 
the foreign ^^air and gaj^ety," to use Dry- 
den's phrase, who became the idols of the 
English courtly society and thus modified 
^Hhe solidity of our nation." Rochester 
was admired because ^^he had a strange Vi- 
vacity of thought, and vigour of expression : 
his Wit had a subtihty and subhmity both, 
that were scarce imitable. When he used 
Figures they were very lively, and yet far 
enough out of the Common Road." ^ He was 
so extravagantly pleasant when inflamed 
with wine that many, to be the more diverted 
by his humor, engaged him deeper in intem- 

1 Burnet, pp. 28, 27, 7. 

2 Ibid., p. 7. 



178 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

perance.^ Buckingham, it is said, was 
mightily praised for the wit he displayed one 
afternoon in a theater. An actress in one of 
Dryden's plays spoke the Une, 

My wound is great, because it is so small, 

and then paused as if in distress. The Duke 
rose at once from his seat in a box and '^ added, 
in a loud ridiculing voice : 

Then 'twould be greater were it none at all !" ^ 

The audience was not shocked by this insolent 
behavior. On the contrary, its delight in wit 
was so great that it '^ hissed the poor woman 
off the stage ; and would never bear her ap- 
pearance in the rest of her part." ^ 

It is the worship of wit, demonstrated in 
this and other ways, that explains the dialogue 
of Restoration comedy. Etheredge, endowed 
with a very considerable Hterary talent, 
produced in his comedies merely a polished 
imitation of the most sparkling dialogue in 
the circle of courtly wits with whom he 
mingled intimately after his first play. Yet 
this transcript from life simply reveals se- 
centismo and preciosity modified and clarified 

1 Cf. Burnet, p. 12. 2 Spence, p. 47. ^ Loc. cit. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 179 

by the ''solidity/' that is, the native common 
sense, of the Enghsh. How far this simpH- 
fication had gone under the chastening in- 
fluence of EngUsh conditions may be seen in 
the handhng of simihtudes : — 

Court[al]. That which troubles me most is, we lost 
the hopes of variety, and a single intrigue in love is as 
duU as a single plot in a play, and will tire a lover worse 
than t'other does an audience. 

Free[man]. We cannot be long without some under- 
plots in this town ; let this be our main design, and if 
we are anything fortunate in our contrivance, we shall 
make it a pleasant comedy.^ 

The handhng of paradox is equally effective: 

Gat[ty]. Truly you seem to be men of great em- 
plojnnent, that are every moment rattling from the 
eating-houses to the playhouses, from the playhouses 
to Mulberry Garden ; that live in a perpetual hurry 
and have httle leisure for such an idle entertainment [as 
making love]. 

Court[al]. Now would not I see thy face for the 
world ; if it should be but half so good as thy humour 
thou wouldst dangerously tempt me to dote upon thee, 
and, forgetting all shame, become constant.^ 

A single reading of another passage will show 
how much more gaiety Etheredge put into 

1 She Would if She Could, iii. 1 (p. 161). 

2 Ibid., ii. 1 (p. 143). 



180 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

repartee than Dryden with his Uterary models 
was able to impart. 

Enter the Women [Ariana and Gatty], and after 
them CouRTAL at the lower door, and Freeman at the 
upper on the contrary side. 

Court. By your leave, ladies. 

Gat. I perceive you can make bold enough without 
it. 

Free. Your servant, ladies. 

Aria. Or any other ladies that will give themselves 
the trouble to entertain you. 

Free. 'Slife, their tongues are as nimble as their heels. 

Court. Can you have so httle good-nature to dash 
a couple of bashful young men out of countenance, who 
came out of pure love to tender you their service? 

Gat. 'Twere pity to baulk 'em, sister. 

Aria. Indeed, methinks they look as if they never 
had been slipped before. 

Free. Yes, faith, we have had many a fair course in 
this paddock, have been very well fleshed, and dare 
boldly fasten. [They kiss their hands with a little force. 

Aria. Well, I am not the first unfortunate woman 
that has been forced to give her hand where she never 
intends to bestow her heart, ^ 

In view of the profound influence of Moliere 
on Etheredge, it may be well to remember 
that in this feature of his dialogue the English 

1 She Would if She Could, ii. 1 (p. 141 f.). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 181 

pla3nvright was in complete opposition to his 
French master. There was nothing MoHere 
found more ridiculous than the striving for 
wit among the precieux. Every one recalls 
the ninth scene of Les Precieuses Ridicules as 
evidence on this point, but a more sarcastic 
attack is the untranslatable speech of EHse 
in La Critique de VEcole des Femmes. 

La jolie de fagon de plaisanter pour des courtisans ! et 
qu'un homme montre d'esprit lorsqu'il vient vous dire : 
'Madame, vous etes dans la place Royale, et tout le 
monde vous voit de trois lieues de Paris, car chacun 
vous voit de bon oeil,' a cause que Boneuil est un village 
^ trois lieues d'ici ! Cela n'est-il pas bien galant et 
bien spirituel? Et ceux qui trouvent ces belles ren- 
contres, n'ont-ils pas lieu de s'en glorifier ? ^ 

This passage illustrates the spirit of Moliere's 
style. The effectiveness of his dialogue, with 
all its incomparable gaiety and unflagging 
verve, is dependent on character and not on 
sharpness of conceit. Dorine in Le Tartuffe 
is witty enough, but she is so, not from the 
use of any figures of speech, but from the 
characteristic impertinence and common sense 
she everyT\^here displays. It was this quality 

1 La Critique de VEcole des Femmes^ sc. 1. 



182 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

in Moliere's style that was influential in call- 
ing forth the grace and ease and liveliness of 
Etheredge's literary gift. Nevertheless, de- 
spite its vivacity, his dialogue is not that of 
Moliere, which with all its gaiety and high 
spirits yet contrives to make us feel the ri- 
diculous side of our follies and foibles. Ether- 
edge, on the contrary, reproduces the life 
and talk of the idle, intriguing, heartless young 
men of his day, not for the purpose of satire, 
but with an air of careless indifference, with 
never a glance at serious matters, with entire 
absorption in the panorama before him. Yet 
it was this very faithfulness that made his 
dialogue more influential than Dryden's, for, 
in Restoration comedy, he was the first 
writer with brilliance enough to succeed con- 
spicuously in transferring to the stage that 
striving after wit which was developing in 
the high society of the realm. 

In the matter of dialogue Wycherley's 
comedies were also more influential than 
Dryden's. Coming out in quick succession, 
they drew all eyes to the yet novel style of 
writing and made famiUar to every playgoer 
the vivid, witty, satirical transcripts from 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 183 

contemporary life. His dialogue of course 
furnishes abundant proof of his study of 
Moliere. Besides the employment of devices 
mentioned earlier in the chapter, there are 
many adapted passages in which he retained 
much of the Frenchman's manner, even where 
the variations from the original were most 
considerable. How true this is may be seen 
by comparing the first half of the second act 
of The Plain Dealer, which is as good dialogue 
as he ever wrote, with the corresponding scene 
in Le Misanthrope} It is nevertheless true 
that he reproduced in his dialogue even less 
of the spirit of Mohere's than Etheredge had, 
for he displayed in even greater profusion 
various forms of metaphysical wit chastened 
by the influence of daily conversation. His 
pages sparkle with the kind of brilliancy most 
admired in the gay society of the time. His 
first play flashes with similitudes like this : — 

Val[entine]. You are as unmerciful as the physician 
who with new arts keeps his miserable patient aUve 
and in hopes, when he knows the disease is incurable. 

Vinlcent]. And you, like the melancholy patient, 

* Op. cit., ill. 4. 



184 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

mistrust and hate your physician, because he will not 
comply with your despair.* 

His paradoxes are more numerous than Eth- 
eredge's. The close of Love in a Wood re- 
veals his fondness for this kind of cynicism : — 

Lyd[ia]. But if I could be desperate now and give 
you up my liberty, could you find in your heart to quit 
all other engagements, and voluntarily turn yourself 
over to one woman, and she a wife too ? could you away 
with the insupportable bondage of matrimony? 

Ran[ger]. You talk of matrimony as irreverently 
as my Lady Flippant : the bondage of matrimony ! 
no — 

The end of marriage now is liberty. 

And two are bound — to set each other free.^ 

These devices are used in profusion in passages 
of repartee. He began early : — 

Gripe. Where is your parson ? 

Dap[perwit]. What ! you would not revenge yourself 
upon the parson ? 

Gripe. No, I would have the parson revenge me upon 
you ; he should marry me.^ 

It is very easy to understand why the circle 
that kept Rochester drunk and applauded 

1 Love in a Wood, v. 5 (p. 111). 

2 Ibid., V. 6 (p. 123). 

3 Ibid. (p. 122). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 185 

the insolence of Buckingham should be 
dazzled by such scintillation and should with 
open arms receive the young author into its 
most exclusive revels and merrymakings. It 
is this association with utterly heartless and 
profligate courtiers that helps to explain his 
even greater departure from Moliere in his 
last two plays, with their uncompromising 
realism and their unrelenting, coarse, violent, 
at times even fierce, satire. No one hears 
even after the most brilliant coruscation the 
peals of laughter that ring in many a scene 
of Moliere. 

The climax and perfection of Restoration 
dialogue is to be found in the comedy of 
William Congreve. . I can think of nothing 
more adequate than the praise of Hazlitt. 
^^It is the highest model of comic dialogue. 
Every sentence is replete with sense and 
satire, conveyed in the most polished and 
pointed terms. Every page presents a shower 
of brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams 
in prose, is a new triumph of wit, a new con- 
quest over dullness. The fire of artful raillery 
is nowhere else so well kept up.'^ ^ Yet this 

1 Hazlitt, Works, viii. 71. 



186 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

is not the result merely of a supreme literary- 
gift. It is simply further evidence of the 
chastened forms of secentismo and preciosity 
lingering in English high society at the end 
of the century. Indeed, Congreve declared 
the banquet-hall of Ralph, Earl of Montague, 
still echoed with the similitudes and para- 
doxes abounding in his comedy,^ and his dec- 
laration is corroborated by the plays them- 
selves. For, to quote Hazlitt again, his 
dialogue "bears every mark of being what 
he himself in the dedication of one of his 
plays tells us that it was, a spirited copy taken 
off and carefully revised from the most select 
society of his time, exhibiting all the spright- 
liness, ease, and animation of familiar con- 
versation, with the correctness and delicacy 
of the most finished composition." ^ 

The result is not an individual creation, 
— it is merely a culmination. The devices 
which Etheredge began to copy from the con- 
versation of the coffee-house and the salon, 
and which Wycherley established behind the 
footUghts, Congreve employed in his bright 

1 Cf . dedication to The Way of the World, 

2 Hazlitt, Works, viii. 71. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 187 

and sparkling dialogue. Naturally, with his 
fine taste, he made less use of similitudes and 
handled them with greater skill. The follow- 
ing piece of repartee is realistic enough to be 
put into any sailor's mouth: — 

Ben. . . . What d'ye mean, after all your fair 
speeches and stroking my cheeks, and kissing, and 
hugging, what, would you sheer off so ? would you, and 
leave me aground? 

Mrs. Frail. No, I'll leave you adrift, and go which 
way you will. 

Ben. What, are you false-hearted, then ? 

Mrs. Frail. Only the wind's changed.^ 

Equally appropriate is this comparison on 
the lips of Valentine feigning madness : — 

You're a woman, — one to whom Heaven gave 
beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the 
reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at 
you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely, spot- 
less paper, when you first are born ; but you are to be 
scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill.^ 

The remainder of the passage illustrates Con- 
greve's favorite form of wit, paradox : — 

Val[entine]. ... I know you ; for I loved a woman, 
and loved her so long, that I found out a strange thing ; 
I found out what a woman was good for. 

1 Love for Love, iv. 3 (p. 276). 

2 Ibid. (p. 282). 



188 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

Tat[tle]. Ay, prithee, what's that? 
Val. Why, to keep a secret. 
Tat. Lord ! 

VaL 0, exceeding good to keep a secret : for though 
she should tell, yet she is not to be believed/ 

He combines it frequently with repartee : — 

Tattle, Valentine, Scandal, and Angelica. 

Ang. You can't accuse me of inconstancy ; I never 
told you that I loved you. 

Val. But I can accuse you of uncertainty, for not 
telling me whether you did or not. 

Ang. You mistake indifference for uncertainty ; I 
never had concern enough to ask myseK the question. 

Scan. Nor good-nature enough to answer him that 
did ask you ; I'll say that for you, madam. 

Ang. What, are you setting up for good-nature? 

Scan. Only for the affectation of it, as the women 
do for ill-nature. 

Ang. Persuade your friend that it is all affectation. 

Scan. I shall receive no benefit from the opinion ; 
for I know no effectual difference between continued 
affectation and reality. 

Tat. [Coming up]. Scandal, are you in private dis- 
course? anything of secrecy? [Aside to Scandal. 

Scan. Yes, I dare trust you ! we were talking of 
Angelica's love for Valentine ; you won't speak of it ? 

Tat. No, no, not a syllable ; — I know that's a secret, 
for it's whispered everjrwhere.^ 
1 Love for Love, iv. 3 (p. 282). 2 jjjid., iii. 3 (p. 240 f.). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 189 

Of course all Congreve's dialogue was height- 
ened and polished by a rare genius for expres- 
sion. No actual conversation ever gUstened 
and glittered with the scintillation that appears, 
for example, in the second act of The Way of 
the World after Millamant enters. Yet even 
in such scenes one must admit that no one 
else has ever combined so much naturalness 
with so much briUiancy. 

After what has been said I hardly need re- 
peat that, neither in Congreve's case nor in 
Restoration comedy as a whole, was the tone 
and spirit of the dialogue due to the influence 
of Moliere. On the contrary, despite numer- 
ous imitated passages and several borrowed 
devices, its tone and spirit were really a con- 
tinuation of the preciosity against which the 
author of Les Femrnes Savantes launched 
some of his most deUghtful satire. The con- 
tinuation was not through literary channels, 
except to a slight degree in the case of John 
Dryden. The other leading dramatists were 
merely dipping from the clarified English 
rivulet of that broad and turbulent current 
of secentismo that flowed through the west- 
ern countries of seventeenth-century Europe. 



190 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

This is evident not only from the statements 
of Dryden and Congreve, but from the oc- 
casional complaint of a minor dramatist that 

in this Age Design no Praise can get : 
You cry it Conversation wants and Wit.^ 

It is evident also from the comic types that 
appear and reappear in successive plays. 
The universally ridiculous figure is the man 
who tries to be a wit and can't. He appears 
variously as the Sparkish or Monsieur Paris 
of Wycherley, as the country wit of Crowne, 
as the Petulant, or Witwoud, or Tattle of 
Congreve. The artificial air of Restoration 
comedy is therefore due to the artificial stand- 
ards of the age. Just as the quick but coarse 
Roman Hstened with delight to the constant 
punning of Plautus, or the volatile and un- 
reflecting Itahan clapped his hands at the 
lazzi, the gymnastic feats and improvised 
wit, of his favorite actors, or the romantic 
but subtle Spaniard found unalloyed pleasure 
in passion that expressed itself in acrostics, 
in pathos that poured forth a flood of conceits, 
in sorrow that had leisure to marshal a whole 

1 Cf . prologue to Durfey's Fond Husband. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 191 

battery of agudezas, so the courtly rakes of 
the Restoration found in the dialogue of the 
leading dramatists the most brilliant employ- 
ment of the wit which it was their chief am- 
bition to display in conversation. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CLOSE OF THE PERIOD 

The comedy of manners developed by 
Moliere was, as we have seen, established in 
England in the decade between 1664 and 
1674, but the previous chapters have made 
it clear that the type was wondrously trans- 
formed by the very men who did most to 
create its vogue in London. Coincident with 
this development of a new variety, the minor 
dramatists in the decade of the seventies bor- 
rowed from Moliere right and left in the con- 
coction of their jumbled intrigues. The influ- 
ence of the reigning style appeared, however, 
in the dim reflection of manners in all these 
busy plots. The scene was frequently Mul- 
berry Garden or the coffee-house or the tavern 
or a boudoir or a drawing-room, and the 
amorous intrigue was supposed to correspond 
more or less closely with the diversions of the 
killing sparks of the day. Such writers as 
Mrs. Behn and Thomas Durfey carried this 
192 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 193 

contaminated intrigue comedy through the 
eighties, and indeed it was the common form 
to the close of the period. The purer variety 
of comedy of manners was perpetuated by 
John Crowne. This diffident writer supple- 
mented his lack of originality by adapting 
plots and characters from Moliere and by 
frequent imitation of his manner of conduct- 
ing dialogue. But Crowne was too conscien- 
tious a workman not to adjust all his borrow- 
ings to his independent purposes. He was too 
conscientious, also, to pander to the tastes of 
his audience by impudent intrigue or indecent 
wit. He could not escape the overwhelming 
influence of Restoration social life and ideals, 
as one sees all too clearly in the plot of The 
Country Wit or the character of Camilla in 
The Married Beau, but the moral tone of his 
comedies is not so perverted as the spirit of 
the age would lead one to expect. From the 
fact that he gave to his style a literary finish 
that reminds one at times of Congreve yet 
did not care much to spin bright webs of rep- 
artee, we may also infer that he did not share 
the prevalent admiration for the incessant 
crackhng of similitude and paradox. 



194 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

As successful as Crowne, but less con- 
sonant with the standard set by Etheredge and 
Wycherley, was Thomas Shad well. He pro- 
fessed himself a follower of Ben Jonson, and 
he did catch exactly the point of view of the 
Jacobean master. Even after the amorous 
intrigues of Epsom Wells he declared 

he'd have it understood, 
By representing few ill Wives, he wou'd 
Advance the Value of the many Good.^ 

The animus of his whole work shows that this 
defense was not so entirely casuistical as would 
appear on the surface. Thefunescapable in- 
fluence of contemporary comedy of manners 
made itself felt also in the faithfulness with 
which he reproduced the slang and cant and 
passing antipathies of London life. For the 
study of that period his Squire of Alsatia is 
an invaluable document. As a piece of Htera- 
ture it is well-nigh worthless, for it not only 
possesses none of the wit of Etheredge or 
Congreve, but it has none of the finish of 
Dryden or Crowne. 

In a theater peopled by such mediocrities 
appeared, at the beginning of the nineties, 

1 Shadwell, Works, ii. 288. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 195 

that astonishing youth, WilHam Congreve, 
destined to carry the Enghsh imitation of 
MoHere's comedy of manners to its highest 
point. On his arrival from the country he 
had with him a play, The Old Bachelor, which 
revealed his acquaintance with Moliere but 
which was constructed as a comedy of intrigue 
with five threads of action. Inspired by 
the success of this first play and by the desire 
to excel in the art which had brought him the 
warm friendship of the literary dictator of the 
age, the young author devoted himself to 
a more serious study of the great Frenchman 
who had started Wycherley and Etheredge 
on their successful careers. 

The effect was obvious at once, as a brief 
review of his plays will show. In The Double 
Dealer J as he avowed in the epistle dedicatory, 
his effort was to imitate the French. A con- 
sideration of the similarities between it and 
Le Tartuffe will reveal how well he had learned 
Moliere's method. Each play is taken up 
with presenting a hypocrite and the evil 
effects of his hypocrisy on the life of the family 
that has befriended him ; in Moliere the chief 
interest is in the characters; in Congreve this 



196 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

interest is not very successfully satisfied, for 
the best work in the play is satire on society. 
Each playwright endeavors to hold the at- 
tention until the very end by allowing the 
hypocrite to succeed in every scheme until 
he brings ruin on himself by excess of con- 
fidence. Each devotes nearly all of the 
first two acts to exposition, and consequently 
fails to secure liveliness of movement. In 
the rest of the play Moliere brings in more 
incident than Congreve, although the latter 
has more intrigue in the last act than in all 
the preceding put together. Each alternates 
serious scenes with genuine comedy. In the 
third act of The Double Dealer, after Lady 
Touchwood's arousing her husband's suspi- 
cion of Mellefont and her conferring with 
Maskwell, Congreve brings in some comic 
scenes ending with the matchless Froth-Brisk 
dialogue. So in the fifth act of Le Tartuffe 
Madame Pernelle is brought in to reheve the 
somber tone with the richest comic effects. 
There is, too, throughout The Double Dealer 
a very good motivation, in which, however, 
Congreve falls below Moliere. These simi- 
larities of method are the more striking be- 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 197 

cause the incidents in the two plays are almost 
entirely different. Congreve was an inde- 
pendent artist, but he profited by a study of 
Moliere's practice. 

Look now at Love for Love, which owes even 
less to Moliere. Sir Sampson Legend is the 
heartless father who drives his son into a re- 
bellious attitude and who becomes the rival 
of his son only to lose in the end, just as Har- 
pagon does in UAvare. The movement in 
the first two acts, which, as in UAvare, are 
largely taken up with exposition, is slower 
than in the French masterpiece. Though Con- 
greve made no exceptional effort to observe 
the unities, the effect of contemporary ex- 
ample and of Moliere's practice is apparent. 
The scene alternates between Valentine's 
lodgings and a room in Foresight's house, 
and the time is part of two days. Unity of 
action is not preserved perfectly, since the 
Foresight-Scandal episode has almost no 
connection with the main plot. But this 
underplot serves the purpose of the whole 
play — which is to satirize the society of the 
day, just as the aim of UAvare is to turn a 
single vice into ridicule. The motivation is 



198 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

not perfect ; it is not clear what Valentine 
hopes to accomplish by his simulation of 
madness, nor is the Frail-Tattle affair suffi- 
ciently prepared for ; but in the motivation 
as a whole the play is not far behind UAvare. 
It is equal to that piece in sustaining the in- 
terest to the very end, and it is even more 
successful in the way that end is brought 
about, — not by a deus ex machina, but from 
within the play itself. In this production 
Congreve accordingly displays again distinc- 
tive features of the French master's craft. 
In The Way of the World, in which there is 
very little borrowing from Moliere, the effect 
of the French technique is equally apparent. 
Observe that this comedy has the same 
purpose as Le Misanthrope: Moliere wishes 
to depict the heau monde of Paris ; Congreve 
wishes to present the high life of London. 
The Frenchman is, as usual, more interested 
in the portrayal of character, the Englishman 
in the satire on society. Observe, too, that 
there is the same want of incident. The first 
two acts in both plays are again largely 
devoted to exposition. The fourth act of 
Congreve 's is slow, but the third and fifth 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 199 

have more movement than the last three of 
Le Misanthrope. Most of the action, too, 
passes in Lady Wishfort's house. Observe, 
lastly, the same device for sustaining the 
suspense. In the first act of each play no 
woman appears. The hstener is kept in 
uncertainty about the denouement until the 
very close of each play. Here Congreve falls 
behind Moliere. Mirabell's plot against Lady 
Wishfort to secure her niece Millamant is 
not perfectly plausible, and Fainall's counter- 
plot to secure a fortune from Lady Wishfort 
is not perfectly clear. Here we miss the 
lucid and convincing motivation of Le Misan- 
thrope. The last act, too, is not the inevitable 
consequence of the preceding action, as it is 
in the French masterpiece. It is so com- 
plicated that it is confusing, and the de- 
nouement is brought about by the deus ex 
machina of the suddenly discovered deed of 
conveyance of Mrs. Fainall's property to 
Mirabell. In spite of these shortcomings 
the general features of the plot-management 
are here, as in the two preceding comedies, 
the same as in Moliere. 

This survey reveals, then, a considerable 



200 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

influence from the great French genius upon 
the general dramatic method of Congreve. 
In all his comedies but the first he manages 
the course of the action in the same way as 
Moliere — he employs a long exposition taking 
up most of two acts, he seldom changes the 
scene, and he holds the interest till the close 
by deferring much of the incident till the final 
act. He shows a care in motivation which, 
though faulty in places, approaches the care 
of the Frenchman in his best pieces, a care 
which was unknown in the comedies of the 
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods of the elder 
drama and which was extremely rare in Res- 
toration comedy. What is equally signifi- 
cant, he gave an earnestness to the main 
thread in each plot that inevitably reminds 
one of the serious element in the French 
masterpieces. Indeed, the action of The 
Double Dealer is essentially tragic, and an 
atmosphere of gravity hangs about the 
central intrigues of The Way of the World 
also. Even Love for Love receives a serious- 
ness of treatment, contains a recognition of 
the fact that life may have some meaning, 
very rare in previous comedy of the period. 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 201 

What is more significant, after his first effort 
he constructed plots of the same kind as those 
in Moliere's masterpieces — plots in which 
the action is invented to serve the purpose 
of the play, — that is, to satirize the foibles 
and vices of society. He did not adopt 
Moliere's practice completely, for he in no 
case made all parts of the intrigue illustrate 
a controlling thesis ; he felt it necessary to 
introduce underplots, which frequently sat- 
irize a different foible, apparently on the 
model of the Fidget episode in The Country 
Wife. But in the conduct of retributive 
justice in his main plot the Frenchman was 
the major influence. 

If we look for special cases of imitation that 
will fully establish our belief that Congreve 
owes the above features of his method to 
a study of Moliere, they are easily found. 
Some devices of exposition have already been 
mentioned : in The Double Dealer and The 
Way of the World the hero and his confidant 
open the action as they do in Le Misanthrope; 
in Love for Love the hero and his servant, as 
in Le Depit Amour eux and several of the 
lighter pieces of Moliere ; in The Old Bachelor 



202 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

and The Way of the World the entrance of the 
women is deferred till the second act on the 
model of Le Misanthrope. Other featm-es 
of Congreve's dramatic method strengthen 
the conclusion. Examine the close of the 
second act of The Old Bachelor or of the fom"th 
of The Double Dealer or Love for Love, and 
then think of the increased briskness of action 
at the end of the third act of UAvare or Le 
Tartuffe, and it becomes clear that Congreve 
adopted Moliere's characteristic method of 
closing an act. The soliloquies of his second 
or of his last piece, when compared with those 
of VEcole des Maris or UEcole des Femmes, 
reveal another phase of the influence. His 
familiarity with the great Frenchman af- 
fected his technique in an even more intimate 
manner, — it conditioned the working of his 
imagination. The coffee-house that furnished 
most of the background for the first act of 
The Way of the World, the lodgings of a young* 
gentleman in the first act of Love for Love, — 
these realistic, commonplace interiors reveal 
how constantly such places as the room in 
Orgon's home or the salon in Celimene's 
hovered before the mind of the young English- 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 203 

man. Certain it is from the foregoing ex- 
amination that, though Congreve could pro- 
vide all the material for his plays by his own 
keen observation of the life in which he moved, 
he studied Moliere for suggestions, absorbed 
the Frenchman's manner, and adopted his 
dramatic method. 

In the treatment of character his indebted- 
ness is also evident. Nothing can be clearer 
than the Mrs. Plyant scenes in The Double 
Dealer} Even the original, Beline, is not 
so effectively presented. There is nothing 
sharper or more incisive in UAvare than the 
scene between Valentine and his father in 
Love for Love.^ Celimene herself is not so 
gay and light as Millamant. Most of his 
characters have so much of this definiteness 
of presentation and of this dramatic heighten- 
ing characteristic of Moliere's that Hazlitt 
declared he would rather see them on the stage 
than any other figures in English comedy.^ 
His comic characters resemble Moliere's in 
another feature. They are not drawn with 

lOp. ciL, ii. 1 (p. 125 ff.); iv. 1 (p. 152 f.). Cf. 
Les Femmes Savantes, i. 4. 

2 Op. ciL, ii. 1 (p. 226 ff.). 

3 Cf. Hazlitt, Works, viii. 74. 



204 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

the complexity of Shakspere's heroes and 
heroines. Their comic effectiveness is based 
on some extravagance which is thrown into 
sharp opposition with the dictates of good 
taste or good sense. No one can mistake 
such basal incongruity in Lady Froth or 
Lady Plyant or Tattle or Foresight. Even 
Madame Pernelle does not offer a greater 
contradiction. Of course Congreve was not 
always at his best. He was never very 
successful in good characters, and he was often 
too profuse with his wit ; but his satiric con- 
ceptions show very clearly that he had studied 
with profit Moliere's method of character por- 
trayal no less than he had the other features 
of that genius's dramatic practice. 

Naturally, this historical account has em- 
phasized Congreve' s indebtedness to Moliere. 
But what impresses one most on first reading 
his comedies is his aptitude for this kind of 
writing, his genius for the theater. Even 
a genius, however, is never absolutely original, 
is affected by his environment profoundly, 
— indeed, must learn many lessons from his 
predecessors. It was therefore inevitable 
that Congreve should become acquainted 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 205 

with previous Restoration comedy, which we 
have seen was so largely affected by Moliere ; 
it was certain he would read closely the com- 
edies of William Wycherley, recognized as 
the best playwright of the period, and it was 
all but inevitable that he should turn to 
Wycherley's well-known source. His native 
genius for the theater and his innate fine 
taste would at once detect the superiority of 
the Frenchman's manner and methods, and 
the admiration thus begotten in the youthful 
aspirant for stage honors would necessarily 
incite him to more enthusiastic study. For 
it must be remembered that Congreve was 
not much over twenty-one when he produced 
his first play, and had hardly entered his 
thirties when he retired from the stage for 
good. The wonder is, then, not that he 
adopted so much from Mohere, but that he 
showed such striking originality in these 
creations of his young manhood. For in 
following a model he was but repeating the 
practice of Moliere himself, who at the begin- 
ning of his career imitated the Italians closely 
and in all his work was influenced by them, 
— he was but following the example set by the 



206 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

greatest genius of his own country, for every 
student of Shakspere is familiar with the 
powerful influence Marlowe exerted on the 
youthful productions of his transcendent suc- 
cessor. 

It should therefore occasion no surprise to 
discover that Congreve took very considerable 
hints from Moliere. One should rather in- 
quire whether the influence did not go deeper, 
whether it did not affect Congreve's point of 
view in dealing with comic material. It 
may be answered at once that the points of 
view of the two writers are much alike. Both 
are largely impersonal in their treatment of 
hfe. Moliere' s aloofness is tinged with sym- 
pathy, which appears in so early a character 
as Arnolphe of UEcole des Femmes and is 
unmistakable in Alceste of Le Misanthrope. 
Congreve is impersonal in a colder way. 
His attitude toward his creations is one of un- 
obtrusive superiority, a careless indifference 
coming from a just sense of the perspective 
of things. But above this cynical attitude 
of the man of the v/orld with his fme intellect 
and his fine taste, there appears no higher 
viewpoint, no broader outlook. He ignores 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 207 

all moral implications of his theme, and is 
utterly oblivious to the social meaning of 
his treatment. He knows the narrow field 
of high society, but he lacks the broad com- 
prehension of all life characteristic of Moliere, 
that insight into the springs of action and the 
deeps of character conspicuous in Le Tartuffe 
and Le Misanthrope. Despite these differ- 
ences Congreve is nearer Moliere in his atti- 
tude toward his material than any other 
Enghsh writer of comedy, and the student 
cannot resist the conclusion that it was under 
his influence that Congreve developed so 
quickly what was of course an inherent sus- 
ceptibility and tendency of his nature. 

Congreve was the last man to embody fully 
the ideals of the courtly circle. Even before 
he entered the world of high society there 
had begun in the theater a movement away 
from the dominance of courtiers and wits. 
The Revolution of 1688 did more than shatter 
forever the absolutism of the king in political 
affairs. The court of William and Mary was 
an immensely different place from the court 
of Charles II. The cold and taciturn William 
with his Dutch favorites and his absorbing 



208 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

interest in questions of state had no time for 
the theater, and his queen, Mary, was of a 
purity so genuine that even pohtical lam- 
pooners respected her. There was not only 
no room for the gallantry that had distin- 
guished Charles's circle, but scandal and 
gossip were unfailingly discountenanced by 
both King and Queen. Moreover, the trans- 
ference of the royal residence to Hampton 
Court and its later establishment at Ken- 
sington removed the royal household entirely 
from the center of that gay life which the 
theater had been reflecting for a score of years. 
Of course the old manner of living and the 
usual kinds of diversion continued to flourish, 
but pohtical questions at home and distant 
campaigns soon began to absorb a good deal 
of attention from the playhouse. After the 
Revolution Shadwell complained that 

Our unfrequented Theatre must mourn, 
'Till the Brave Youths Triumphantly return,^ 

and that the soft men of peace 

eagerly elsewhere in Throngs resort, 
Crowding for Places in the well-fiU'd Court.^ 

Southerne in 1691 declared, 

1 Shadwell, Works, iv. 214. 2 75^-^^ 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 209 

heroes are the same, 
A twelvemonth running in pursuit of fame/ 

SO that the ladies, and the dramatists, too, 
we infer, deeply regretted the ^'thin town.'^ 
The theater had indeed ceased to be the diver- 
sion of the leading men, few but fops attend- 
ing, and they meeting with anything but 
flattery from the dramatists.^ The women 
accordingly made their taste more respected 
than it had been, their complaints becoming 
more numerous and much more influential 
than ever before. Southerne omitted a scene 
in Sir Anthony Love (1691) that Lee might 
have acted to great advantage, because he 
did not care to "run the venture of offending 
the women." ^ Shad well assured the ladies 
in the prologue to The Scowrers (1693) that 

the Play's so clean, 
The nicest shall not tax it for Obscene.^ 

The defiant Vanbrugh felt it necessary to 
reply to the attacks on The Relapse (1696) 
by averring with brazen disregard for the 

1 Southerne, Works, i. 158. 

2 Cf . Shadwell, Works, iv. 397 f . 
2 Southerne, Works, i. 156. 

4 ShadweU, Works, iv. 307. 



210 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

truth that there was not one woman of real 
reputation in town but would find it innocent.^ 
Congreve also had to take account of the 
ladies,^ and he even went so far as to declare 
to the Princesse Anne 'Hhat a play may be 
with industry so disposed (in spite of the 
Ucentious practice of the modern theatre) 
as to become sometimes an innocent, and not 
unprofitable entertainment." ^ It was there- 
fore perfectly natural that Jeremy Collier's 
Short View should be acclaimed as a trium- 
phant condemnation of the rule of gallants 
and wits in the theater. The respectable 
middle class, with its bourgeois virtues and 
morals, which had lived its quiet life in re- 
tirement all those years since the Restora- 
tion of Charles II, now boldly invaded the 
playhouse and demanded that its prejudices 
be observed. 

All such revolutions are slow. Sir John 
Vanbrugh, with the instinctive dissent of 
a realist, revolted from the approaching ref- 
ormation, declaring that life was not chaste 

1 Cf. Vanbrugh, i. 7. 

2 Cf. epistle dedicatory to The Double Dealer (1694). 

3 Dedication to The Mourning Bride (1697). 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 211 

and manners were not pure, and that he was 
going to picture conditions as they were. It 
was thoroughly consistent with this attitude 
that in all parts of his work he exhibited 
curiously little study of models, but every- 
where displayed a full reliance on his native 
sense of the humorous and the dramatically 
effective. He apparently made up his plot 
as he went along, introducing characters as 
needed. In The Relapse he had Young 
Fashion personate his brother, Lord Fopping- 
ton, in the country at the home of Sir Tunbelly 
Clumsy in order to win the daughter and her 
fortune, which had already been pledged 
to Lord Foppington. When the true lord 
unexpectedly arrived at the Clumsy home, 
Young Fashion boldly declared his brother 
an impostor, and Sir Tunbelly accordingly 
drove the intruder's servants away and locked 
the lord himself up in a dog-kennel. Of course 
at this point Vanbrugh had to display some 
ingenuity in extricating the mistreated fop 
from so humiliating a situation. He accord- 
ingly had Lord Foppington mention Sir 
John Friendly, a neighboring squire, as a 
friend of his, though the man had not been 



212 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

spoken of before in the play and was not to 
appear after identifying the ill-used dandy. 
This incident fairly illustrates Vanbrugh's 
method — the developing of separate situa- 
tions as the possibilities presented themselves, 
but without reference to a central theme or 
a general design. It is unnecessary to re- 
mark that he did not study Mohere, for it is 
clear that he paid little attention to the struc- 
ture of anybody's plays. 

His independence appears in other features 
of his work. The method of character- 
drawing that Wycherley employed in imita- 
tion of MoHere, if he had noticed it at all, 
would have seemed a waste of time. '^What 
is the use," he might have exclaimed to a 
praiser of The Plain Dealer, ^^when just as 
many funny situations can be developed with- 
out such study? Whenever I see anything 
laughable in life I copy it and exaggerate 
it until it is laughable on the stage. Little 
inconsistencies or failures to follow probability 
will be overlooked." His use of contrast, 
however, such as the opposition between 
Lord Foppington and Sir Tunbelly in The 
Relapse, or that between Sir John Brute 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 213 

and his wife in The Provoked Wife, was ob- 
viously suggested by The Plain Dealer and 
The Country Wife. His absorbing interest 
in reality led him to adopt also Wycherley's 
manner of lingering over scenes while the 
intrigue sleeps. His comedies abound in 
passages such as the one describing Lord 
Foppington's manner of life,^ for he had a keen 
eye for the ridiculous and took pleasure in 
presenting it, no matter how long the action 
had to pause. Yet these passages differ from 
the similar ones in Wycherley, for the satirical 
interest is not thrust upon the audience. 
The acts and words of the characters are 
allowed to speak for themselves. 

Though Vanbrugh fought against the ref- 
ormation of the theater, he did not worship 
with the inner circle of gallants and wits. 
He liked to take his plot out into the country, 
on which occasions he would reproduce dialect 
almost as faithfully as Shadwell copied the 
cant of Alsatia. But even his town gallants 
do not fire off similitudes and paradoxes in 
that brilliant pyrotechnic fashion common 

1 Cf. The Relapse, ii. 1 (p. 43 ff.). 



214 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

in Wycherley, Dryden, and Congreve. Al- 
though Vanbrugh displayed a considerably 
greater literary gift than Shadwell, his aim 
was to portray life realistically, without sub- 
jecting the conversation to the for him un- 
familiar polish it received at the hands of his 
distinguished predecessors. In other words, 
he was not of the exclusive set in high society 
to which the leaders had belonged — he was 
not of the coterie. 

Yet Vanbrugh was essentially an English- 
man of the Restoration. He was in fact 
closer to the comedy of manners as Etheredge 
introduced it into England than any other 
writer of the period. The savage satire that 
Wycherley indulged in does not appear in his 
comedies. Lord Foppington, Lady Fanciful, 
and the Headpiece family are presented with 
considerably less grace, to be sure, but with 
much the same detachment that Etheredge 
used in presenting Sir Fophng Flutter. But 
Vanbrugh 's presentation of manners, I hardly 
need add, is completely lacking in the 
sympathy with life and the insight into 
character that distinguished Moliere. To 
use an old figure, his method is the method 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 215 

of the photographer, who reproduces faith- 
fully but reproduces only the outside. Mo- 
liere's method is the method of the artist, 
who transforms what he reproduces so as to 
omit what is accidental and to reveal what is 
essential. In this respect Congreve is much 
closer to Moliere than is Vanbrugh. Con- 
greve presents his pictures with artistic del- 
icacy of touch. Vanbrugh paints with a 
realism that is frequently brutal. But it is 
not surprising that one who knew nothing 
of Moliere's genius did not catch the comic 
spirit of the French master. The only influ- 
ence of Moliere on Vanbrugh was the indirect 
influence through previous English comedy. 

Vanbrugh is thus seen to carry on the comedy 
of manners with a partial loss of the tone of 
the clique. This divergence from tradition 
was continued by Farquhar. He hardly be- 
longs in a discussion of Moliere's influence, 
since his knowledge of the great Frenchman 
was slighter even than Vanbrugh' s. His 
eye was apparently caught by a few scenes 
as he was turning the pages of Moliere in 
idle moments, but he really knew nothing 
directly of the spirit of the Frenchman's 



216 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

comedies. Nor was he saturated with the 
spirit of Restoration comedy. Reared far 
away from the courtly circle and reaching 
London when the women and citizens were 
making their prejudices known, he really 
marks the close of the period. 

That the influence of the coterie was lessen- 
ing is seen in every feature of his work. He 
does not spend all his time in presenting the 
manners of the fine gentlemen and ladies of 
London. He often places his scenes in country 
towns and depicts provincial customs. His 
chief personages have in them something 
natural and wholesome that is lacking in the 
creations of his predecessors. His sparks are 
not so utterly heartless as Etheredge's, and 
his fine ladies less frequently give way to 
animal instinct. Sir Harry Wildair has a 
regard for others that cannot be matched in 
Congreve, and Mrs. Sullen retains her vir- 
tue under trials in which any character in 
Wycherley or Dryden would have lost hers. 
More than this, Farquhar follows a differ- 
ent method of presenting his material. The 
manners are not described in lengthy passages 
while the action and characterization are at a 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 217 

standstill, — a method which we found was 
traceable to Moliere's influence. He is skilful 
enough, in spite of his scorn of regular struc- 
ture, to weave the picture of manners into 
his plot. His figures are kept moving most 
of the time. He thus advances a step beyond 
Vanbrugh in leaving the typical comedy of 
the Restoration. 

He advances beyond Vanbrugh also in the 
omission of similitudes, paradox, and balance. 
He makes little effort to be witty. He does 
not elaborate or polish his style. This quality 
is not the result of the realistic tendency 
observable in Vanbrugh. It is rather because 
he had always been an entire stranger to the 
forms of metaphysical wit. His style is not 
highly literary in any sense. It is merely 
the natural effervescence of a buoyant and 
sprightly disposition. With him the artificial 
comedy of the Restoration came to a close, 
to give place to the sentimental comedy of 
the eighteenth century with its reflection of 
a less corrupt but more hypocritical society. 



CHAPTER IX 

CONCLUSION 

The characteristics of Restoration comedy 
must now be clear. The two main currents may 
be designated comedy of manners and comedy 
of intrigue. The first in particular reflected 
with the inevitable exaggeration of the theater 
the life of the ruling coterie of the period, the 
various diversions of the heartless gallants 
and airy coquettes who were always on the 
lookout for some new conquest, the frivolities 
and affectations of the fops and precieuses 
in the park, at the coffee-house, in the bou- 
doir or the drawing-room, the prejudices and 
prepossessions of the beau monde, its amused 
contempt for country knights, rustic hoydens, 
strait-laced citizens, and miserly aldermen, 
its admiration for sparkling wit and sprightly 
repartee, — almost the one serious preoccu- 
pation of that whole artificial society. The 
comedy of intrigue endeavored to supply the 
218 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 219 

lack of well-drawn types and vivid pictures 
from life by a confusing intricacy of action 
and a bewildering variety of persons, and to 
make up for the deficiency of genuine wit by 
a superfluity of indelicate allusion. 

Such a comedy bore a natural resemblance 
to the society which gave it birth. That 
society manifested no profound interest in 
the momentous issues that hung upon the 
political struggles of the period. Its only 
tribute to religion was a persistent effort to 
escape all the restraints which any form of 
morality might impose. All its energies 
were consequently absorbed in leading the 
dance through a profligate carnival of the 
senses. It was therefore incapable of the 
generous romantic interest of Elizabethan 
England or of the golden age of Spain. It 
was totally averse to reflecting on the mystery 
of life or the problems of destiny. It was 
interested only in itself and in its own su- 
perficial amusements. It could find pleasure 
only in a theater that would represent brightly 
colored pictures of the external aspect of its 
own mundane existence. It could produce 
only a comedy of manners which should 



220 THE INFLUENCE OF MOLIERE 

restrict itself to the entertainment of a co- 
terie. 

One may therefore ask whether a product 
so intimately related to its period was really 
influenced by Moliere. One may urge that 
Restoration comedy, though possessing very 
marked differences from Jacobean comedy 
of manners, was after all simply the logical 
and inevitable evolution of the court comedy 
seen developing under Fletcher and Shirley. 
It may be admitted at once that the Res- 
toration would have produced a comedy not 
much different from the actual product, even 
had Moliere never lived. ♦ Every period where 
a society grows up living a life more or less 
apart from the body of the people and thus 
fostering an interest in itself, must find ex- 
pression in some variety of comedy of man- 
ners if it find expression in the theater at all. 
But the fact remains that the peculiar variety 
developed during the Restoration owed a 
good deal to Moliere. The cases of particular 
indebtedness discussed in the previous chap- 
ters have surely made it clear that with a 
few exceptions the plots best suited to reflect 
the conditions of the time were either adapted 



ON RESTORATION COMEDY 221 

from Moliere or developed under his in- 
fluence, that the situations most instinct with 
comic satire derived their effectiveness from 
the reproduction in some degree of Moliere's 
spirit, and that the types of character that 
linger in one's memory may be traced more 
or less directly to the pages of Moliere. This 
counts for something. But more important 
is the truth which I hope the preceding chapters 
have made clear that Restoration comedy, 
taken as a type, owed its inception and found 
its development in an imitation of the comedy 
of manners of Moliere, in the process battered 
and twisted and distorted often almost be- 
yond recognition, but after all an evidence 
of the influence of that genius whom every 
Frenchman delights to honor. And the rea- 
son why this foreign type, not in its tech- 
nical features, but in its animating spirit, 
was more influential than Jonson's comedy 
of humors or Fletcher's court comedy, is that 
it was more congenial to a society that was 
less interested in satirical portraiture or 
romantic exaggeration than it was in its own 
mundane existence. 



APPENDIX 

A LIST OF BORROWINGS 

The following list aims to give only the important 
direct borrowings from Moliere. To trace the indirect 
indebtedness would be impossible within any reasonable 
limits. For minor borrowings, such as copied phrases, 
the reader is referred to the special studies, which are 
noted in the Bibliography whenever they have come 
to my notice. Even thus restricted, the notes may be 
misleading, especially in the treatment of character. 
For instance, it has been impossible to indicate when 
a borrowing from Moliere included a whole scene and 
when only a passage from the scene cited. But of 
course these and other explanations and qualifications, 
necessary for exactness, would be out of the question 
here. The various features of each play discussed in 
the preceding chapters may be traced by reference to 
the index. Unless otherwise specified, the dates are 
the most probable dates of production. 

I hardly need add that the list below is the result 
of my own research, but I have used previous investi- 
gations for guidance or suggestion. The direct or 
indirect source of all lists of borrowings has been Lang- 
baine (1691), who dehghted to expose plagiarism, and 
whose wide reading in drama enabled him to detect a 
great many cases of indebtedness. The first list of 
borrowings appeared in Jacob (1723), i. 292 ff. An 
223 



224 APPENDIX 

extensive list was drawn up in some detail by Laun 
and published in Le Molieriste under the title, Les 
Plagiaires de Moliere en Angleterre (aout, 1880, p. 143 ff . ; 
novembre, 1880, p. 235 ff.; Janvier, 1881, p. 303 ff.; 
mai, 1881, p. 52 ff.; aout, 1881, p. 137 ff.). The same 
material had appeared in the notices and appendices 
of his translation of Moliere (1875-6). Charlanne 
(1906), p. 490 ff., made few changes in Laun. Kerby 
(1907), p. 115 ff., also drew from second-hand sources. 
As I did not run across Kerby's monograph till Novem- 
ber, 1909, I was unable to derive any advantage from 
his work. (The only copy I know of is in the Columbia 
University Library.) In a few cases I have found hints 
in the scattered notices that occur in histories of English 
drama, in dictionaries of old plays, in biographies and 
editions of Moliere. For the numerous special studies 
the reader is again referred to the Bibliography, II. 

Amorous Bigot, The, (1690) by Shadwell. The 
rivalry of father and son is a reminiscence of VAvare. 
The scenes in which Hernando appears (act iv.) are 
a reminiscence of the plot of Les Precieuses Ridicules. 
The relation of Elvire to her mother is a reflection 
of the motif of UEcole des Maris (probably through 
The Country Wife). Act. iv. (p. 271 f.) was suggested 
by UAvare, iii. 6, 7, and Les Femmes Savantes, i. 4. 

Amorous Widow, or the Wanton Wife, The, (1670) 
by Betterton. (1) The stratagem of Cuningham 
against Lady Lay cock, chiefly in acts i. and ii., is 
adapted freely from Les Precieuses Ridicules. (2) 



APPENDIX 225 

The second plot, the Brittle action, is adapted from 
George Dandin (act iii. = George Dandin, i.; act iv. 
= George Dmidin, ii. ; act v. = George Dandin, iii.), 
about a third being pretty closely translated, the 
remainder more or less freely adapted. 
(1) Merryman = Mascarille {Les Precieuses Ridi- 
cides) ; Cuningham = La Grange. (2) Sir Peter Pride 
= M. de Sotenville {George Dandin) ; Lady Pride = 
Madame de Sotenville ; Lovemore = Clitandre; Bar- 
naby Brittle = George Dandin ; Clodpole = Lubin; 
Mrs. Brittle = Angelique ; Damaris = Claudine. Pru- 
dence is an imitation of Moliere's soubrettes. 

Amphitryon, or the Two Sosias, (1690) by Dryden. 

(1) The play is an adaptation of Amphitryon. 

(2) The Mercury-Phsedra intrigue was suggested by 
Le Mariage Force: act v. 1 (p. 95 ff.) is adapted 
from Le Mariage Force, sc. 9. 

Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, The, (1672) by 
Dryden. Act iii. 1 (p. 417 f.) is freely adapted from 
UEtourdi, ii. 11. Act iv. 4 (p. 443 ff.) is freely 
adapted from Le Tartuffe, ii. 4. Benito is a free 
adaptation of Lelie (UEtourdi). 

Atheist, or the Second Part of the Soldier's 
Fortune, The, (1684) by Otway. The conduct of 
Porcia is a reminiscence of L'Ecole des Femmes, prob- 
ably through The Country Wife. The recital by 
Beaugard's father of his hard luck at dice (act iii., p. 
42) is an alteration of Les Fdcheux, ii. 2. 

Bargain Broken, A. See The Canterbury Guests. 
Q 



226 APPENDIX 

Beaux' Stratagem, The, (1707) by Farquhar. Act 
iii. 3 (p. 295 ff.) is freely adapted from Le Tartuffe, 
iv. 5, 6. 

Bury Fair (1689) by Shadwell. Cf. ante, p. 133 ff. 
Act i. (p. 121 ff.) is freely adapted from Le Misan- 
thrope, ii. 4. Act i. (p. 124 f.) was suggested by Le 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, iii. 4, or possibly bj^ La 
Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, sc. 2. Act v. (p. 197 f.) 
was suggested by Le Misanthrope, v. 2. 

Canterbury Guests, or a Bargain Broken, The, 
(1694) by Ravenscroft. (1) The play reproduces 
word for word more than half of The Careless Lovers. 
(2) Act i. 3 was suggested by the character of Sgana- 
relle in Le Mariage Force. Act ii. 5 is adapted from 
Le Mariage Force, sc. 2. Act iii. 1 is adapted from 
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, iii, 4. Act v. 1 is adapted 
from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, ii. 4. Act v. 5 is 
adapted from Le Mariage Force, sc. 9. 

Careless Lovers, The, (1673) by Ravenscroft. (1) 
The main action is an adaptation of Monsieur de 
Pourceaugnac. Act iv. (pp. 41-5) is adapted from 
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, ii. 7, 8 ; act iv. (pp. 38- 
40) was suggested by Les Precieuses Ridicules, sc. 
9, 13; act ii. (pp. 10-16) is adapted from Le Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme, iii. 8-10 ; act ii. (p. 17 f.) was suggested 
by Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, i. 2 ; in act v. (p. 56 f.), 
the disguise was suggested by Le Medecin malgre lui. 
(2) A minor action was suggested by An Evening's 
Love. There are several episodes. 



APPENDIX 227 

Cautious Coxcomb, The. See Sir Salomon. 

Cheats of Scapin, The, (1677) by Otway. The play 
is a translation for the stage of Les Fourberies de 
Scapin. Acts i., ii., are translated closely. In act 
iii., scenes 3-5 are omitted ; scenes 7-11 are replaced 
by new scenes. 

Citizen turned Gentleman, The. See Mamamouchi. 

Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub, The, (1664) by 
Etheredge. The subplot was suggested by Le Depit 
Amoureux. Cf. arite, p. 62 ff. 

Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, The, 
(1699) by Farquhar. Act ii. 5 (p. 165 f.) was sug- 
gested by Le Medecin malgre lui, i. 5. 

Country Wife, The, (1673) by Wycherley. (1) The 
play is an adaptation of UEcole des Femmes, modified 
in acts iv. and v. by UEcole des Maris. Act i. 1 
(p. 261 ff.) is adapted from UEcole des Femmes, i. 1 ; 
act iv. 2 (p. 313 f.) is adapted from UEcole des 
Femmes, ii. 5 ; act iv. 2 ( p. 317 f.) and 4 (p. 333 ff.) 
were suggested by UEcole des Maris, ii. 3 ; act v. 1 
(p. 336 ff.) was suggested by UEcole des Maris, iii. 
1-3. (2) The Sparkish-Alithea subplot was suggested 
by the relations of Leonor and Ariste in UEcole 
des Maris: act iii. 2 (p. 296 ff.) was suggested by 
UEcole des Maris, ii. 9. 
Pinchwife = Arnolphe {UEcole des Femmes) ; Mrs. 

Pinchwife = Agnes ; Horner = Horace. 

Country Wit, The, (1675) by Crowne. (1) Le Sicilien 
is adapted for a minor intrigue : act ii. (pp. 48-51) 



228 APPENDIX 

is a free adaptation of Le Sicilien, sc. 3, 4 ; act iv. 
(pp. 88-96) is adapted from Le Sicilien, sc. 9-13. 
(2) The main plot was suggested by Le Tartuffe: 
act i. (p. 19 ff.) is freely adapted from Le Tartuffe, 
ii. 2, with suggestions from Le Tartuffe, i. 5. 

(1) Lord Drybone = Don Pedre {Le Sicilien) ; Betty 
Frisque = Isidore ; Ramble = Adraste; Merry = Hali. 
(2) Sir Thomas = Orgon {Le Tartuffe) ; Isabella = 
Dorine. Lady Faddle was suggested by the Comtesse 
d'Escarbagnas — e.g., cf. act i. (p. 32 f.) and La Com- 
tesse d'Escarbagnas, sc. 2, — and by Belise : act ii. (p. 
37 f.) was suggested by Les Fenunes Savantes, i. 4. 

Cuckold in Conceit, The, (1707) by Vanbrugh. A 
translation for the stage of Sganarelle, which was never 
published. 

Curious Impertinent, The. See The Married Beau. 

Damoiselles a la Mode, The, (1667) by Flecknoe. 
''This Comedy is taken out of several Excellent 
Pieces of Moliere. The main plot of the Damoiselles 
out of his Precieuses Ridicules ; the Counterplot of 
Sganarelle, out of his Escole des Femmes, and out of 
the Escole des Marys, the two Naturals." This 
passage from the preface is given in Lohr, p. 88. 
The play has not been accessible to me. 

Double Dealer, The, (1694) by Congreve. (1) The 
plot was suggested by Le Tartuffe. Cf. ante, p. 195 ff. 
Act V. 1 is freely adapted from Le Tartuffe, iii. 7. 

(2) Act ii. 1 (p. 126 ff.) is adapted from Les Femmes 
Savantes, i. 4 ; act iii. 3 (the heroic poem) was sug- 



APPENDIX 229 

gested by Les Femmes Savantes, iii. 2 (the epigram), 
with free adaptation from Le Misanthrope, ii. 4. 
Maskwell = Tartuffe ; Careless = Cleante ; Lord 
Touchwood = Orgon ; Lady Froth = Philaminte {Les 
Femmes Savantes) as a learned lady ; Sir Paul and 
Lady Plyant = Chrysale and Philaminte as man and 
wife. The conception of Lady Plyant also owes a good 
deal to Belise. 

Double Discovery, The. See The Spanish Friar. 

Dumb Lady, or the Farrier made Physician, The, 
(1669) by Lacy. Cf. ante, p. 88 ff. Act i. is closely 
adapted from Le Medecin malgre lui, i. ; act ii. is 
closely adapted from Le Medecin malgre lui, ii. ; 
act iii. is closely adapted from Le Medecin malgre lui, 
iii. 1-6 ; act iii. (p. 54 ff.) was suggested by Les 
Fourberies de Scapin, ii. 5 ; act iv. is freely adapted 
from U Amour Medecin, i. 4, 3, 6 ; act v. is very freely 
adapted from U Amour Medecin, ii. 2-7, with sug- 
gestions from Le Medecin malgre lui, iii. 11, 9. 

English Friar, or the Town Sparks, The, (1690) 
by Crowne. The play is a free adaptation of Le 
Tartuffe. Act v. (p. 112 ff.) is adapted from Le 
Tartuffe, iv. 3, 5. 

Father Finical = Tartuffe ; Lady Credulous = Orgon ; 
Sir Thomas = Elmire (in part) ; Pansy = Elmire (in 
part). Lord Stately is a reminiscence of La Comtesse 
d'Escarbagnas. E.g., act i. (pp. 32, 35) was suggested by 
La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, sc. 2. Lady Pinchgut is an 
adaptation of Harpagon in VAvare. Cf. ante, p. 158 f. 



230 APPENDIX 

Epsom Wells (1672) by Shadwell. Act iv. (p. 261 ff.) 
is adapted from Le Medecin malgre lui, i. 1-3. Cuff, 
Kick, and Clodpate are reminiscences of Acaste, 
Clitandre, and Alceste in Le Misa7ithrope. 

Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer, An, 
(1668) by Dryden. Act i. 1 (p. 261 f.) is freely 
adapted from UEcole des Maris, i. 3. Act iii. 1 
(p. 304 ff.) is adapted from Le Depit Amoureux, ii. 6. 
Act iv. 2 (p. 334 f.) is adapted from Le Depit Amoureux, 
i. 2. Act iv. 4 (p. 341 ff.) is freely adapted by com- 
bination of Le Depit Amoureux, iv. 3 and 4. 
Aurelia is adapted from. Cathos and Madelon in Les 

Precieuses Ridicules: act iii. 1 (p. 296 f.) was suggested 

by Les Precieuses Ridicides, sc. 6. 

False Count, or a New Way to Play an Old Game, 
The, (1682) by Behn. The Isabella-Quillon action 
was suggested by Les Precieuses Ridicules. The only 
point where Quillon directly imitates Mascarille is in 
offering to show a wound : act ii. (p. 130 f.) is taken 
from Les Precieuses Ridicules, sc. 11. 

Farrier made Physician, The. See The Dumb Lady. 

Feigned Innocence, The. See Sir Martin Mar- All. 

Female Virtuosoes, The, (1693) by Wright. (1) 
The main action is a close adaptation of Les Femmes 
Savantes. (2) A minor action is spun about Witless: 
act i. (pp. 5-7) was suggested by Monsieur de Pour- 
ceaugnac, i. 3 ; act ii. (p. 13 ff.) is translated from Le 
Malade Imaginaire, ii. 5, 6 (two-thirds) ; act iv. , 
(p. 34 f.) is adapted from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 



APPENDIX 231 

ii. 6 ; act iv. (p. 38 ff.) is adapted and expanded from 
Les Fourberies de Scapin, ii. 6 ; act iv. (p. 39 ff.) 
was suggested by Le Manage Force, sc. 9 ; act v. 
(p. 44 ff.) is adapted from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 
iii. 6. 

French Puritan, The. See Tartxiffe. 

Gentleman Dancing Master, The, (1671) by Wych- 
erley. The conception of Paris owes something 
to Sganarelle in UEcole des Maris. 

Humorists, The, (1670) by Shadwell. The courting 
of Theodosia by Crazy, Brisk, and Drybob is a 
reminiscence of Le Misanthrope, where C^hmene 
is courted by Acaste, CHtandre, and Oronte. 

Impertinents, The. See The Sullen Lovers. 

It Cannot Be. See Sir Courtly Nice. 

Kind Keeper, The. See Limherham. 

Libertine, The, (1676) by Shadwell. The play is 
an adaptation of Le Nouveau Festin de Pierre by 
Rosimond. The only scenes that may have been 
suggested by Moliere are: act iii. (p. 146 f.. Enter 
Don Lopez and Don Antonio . . . Enter Don John 
and Jacomo), from Don Juan, iii. 2 (end), 3 ; and act 
iii. (p. 147 ff., Enter Leonora, . . . Exeunt), from 
Don Juan, iv. 6. 

Limberham, or the Kind Keeper, (1678) by Dryden. 
Mrs. Saintly is a free adaptation of Tartuffe. Brain- 
sick = Lisandre in Les Fdcheux: act iii. 1 (p. 62) is 
from Les Fdcheux, i. 3. 



232 APPENDIX 

London Cuckolds, The, (1682) by Ravenscroft. 
Act ii. (p. 22 ff.) was suggested by L'Ecole des Femmes, 
ii. 5. Wiseacre = Arnolphe ; Peggy = Agnes. 

Love and a Bottle (1698-9) by Farquhar. The con- 
ception of Mockmode is drawn from Monsieur Jour- 
dain {e.g., cf. act ii. 2, p. 38 ff., and Le Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme, ii. 2) and from Monsieur de Pourceau- 
gnac {e.g., cf. act iii. 2, p. 69 ff., and Monsieur de 
Pourceaugnac, i. 4). 

Love for Love (1695) by Congreve. (1) The out- 
line for the plot was suggested by L'Avare. Cf. ante, 
p. 197 f. (2) Act i. 1 (p. 205 ff.) is adapted from 
Don Juan, iv. 3 ; act ii. 2 (p. 231 f.) was suggested 
by Le Misanthrope, iii. 4 ; act iv. 3 (p. 285 f.) was 
suggested probably by UEtourdi, iii. 4 (opening). 
Sir Sampson was suggested by Harpagon. 

Love in a Nunnery. See The Assignation. 

Love in a Tub. See The Comical Revenge. 

Love in a Wood, or St. James's Park, (1671) by 
Wycherley. The use Dapperwit makes of Sir Simon 
was suggested by the relation of Horace and Arnolphe 
in UEcole des Femmes. Act iii. 2 (p. 65 ff.) is adapted 
freely from UEcole des Maris, ii. 3, 4. Act v. 1 
was suggested by UEcole des Femmes, v. 3. 
The attitude of Gripe to his daughter and her running 

away with Dapperwit was suggested by the character 

and fate of Sganarelle in UEcole des Maris. 
'V Love's Contrivance (1703) by Centlivre. The play 
has a very cleverly constructed intrigue based on Le 



APPENDIX 233 

Mededn malgre lui and Le Manage Force, in which 
appear, with few changes, translations of : Le 
Manage Force, sc. 1-5, 8 ; Le Medecin malgre lui, 
i. Suggestions are taken from Sganarelle, sc. 1, 2, 
and Le Medecin malgre lui, ii. 4. 

Loves of Mars and Venus, The, (pub. 1696) by 
Motteux. No indebtedness to MoHere in spite of 
assertion to the contrary. 

Love Triumphant, or Nature will Prevail, (1694) 
by Dryden. Act i. 1 (p. 397) was suggested by 
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, ii. 6. Act v. 1 (p. 458 ff.) 
was suggested by Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, ii. 8. 
Sancho is a reminiscence of LeHe in VEtourdi. 

Mamamouchi, or the Citizen turned Gentleman, 
(1671) by Ravenscroft. Cf. ante, p. 103 £f. 

Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, The, (1676) 
by Etheredge. Act iii. 2 (p. 295 ff.) is adapted from 
Les Precieuses Ridicules, sc. 9. Act iv. 1 (p. 327 f.) 
and 2 (p. 338 f.) were suggested by Les Precieuses 
Ridicules, sc. 9 (another passage in the scene). Cf. 
ante, p. 136 ff. 
For the character of Sir FopHng, cf. ante, p. 135 ff. 

Married Beau, or the Curious Impertinent, The, 
(1694) by Crowne. Act ii. (p. 272 f.) is a reminis- 
cence of Les Precieuses Ridicules, sc. 9. 

Marriage a la Mode (1672) by Dryden. Melantha 
is an adaptation from MoUere's several paintings of 
preciosity. 



234 APPENDIX 

Metamorphosis, or the Old Lover Outwitted, The, 
(1704) by Corey. The play owes nothing to Moliere. 
Cf. ante, p. 81. 

Miser, The, (1671) by Shadwell. The main plot is 
almost a translation of UAvare. But about forty 
per cent of the play is taken up with the added char- 
acters, Timothy Squeeze, Lettice, Joyce, Rant, and 
Hazard, in scenes from London low life. Anselme 
of the original does not appear. His will is executed 
by his son. The plan proposed by Frosine in UAvare, 
iv. 1, is carried out in action. 

^ Mistake, The, (1705) by Vanbrugh. The play is a 
translation for the stage of Le Depit Amoureux. 

Mock Astrologer, The. See An Evening's Love. 
Modish Wife, The. See Tom Essence. 

Mulberry Garden, The, (1668) by Sedley. Act i. 

(p. 35 ff.) is adapted from VEcole des Maris, i. 1. 

No borrowing occurs in the remainder of the play. 

Forecast ( = Sganarelle) and Everyoung ( = Ariste) 
continue through the play. Each has two daughters 
in place of one ward. 

Nature will Prevail. See Love Triumphant. 

New Way to Play an Old Game, A. See The False 
Count. 

Old Bachelor, The, (1693) by Congreve. Act ii. 
(p. 21 ff.) is freely adapted from Les Fourberies de 
Scapin, ii. 7 (cf. the opening of each), with a sug- 
gestion from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, i. 4. Act ii. 



APPENDIX 235 

(p. 28 f.) was suggested by Les Femmes Savantes, i. 1. 
Act iii. 2 (p. 41 f.) is a reminiscence of George Dandin, 
ii. 1. Act iv. 6 (p. 67 f.) is freely adapted from George 
Dandin, ii. 8, with a suggestion from UEcole des 
Maris, ii. 9. 

The conception of Heartwell owes something to 
Sganarelle : e.g., cf. Le Mariage Force, sc. 1, and The 
Old Bachelor, i. (p. 15). Araminta and Belinda show 
reminiscences of Moliere's precieuses. 

Old Lover Outwitted, The. See The Metamorphosis. 

Plain Dealer, The, (1774) by Wycherley. (1) 
The play is an adaptation of Le Misanthrope: act i. 
1 (p. 382 ff.) is adapted from Le Misanthrope, i. 1 
(first half); act ii. 1 (p. 400 ff.) is adapted from Le 
Misanthrope, ii. 4 ; act iv. 2 is adapted from Le 
Misanthrope, iii. 1, and v. 4. (2) Act ii. 1 (p. 407 
fT.) is adapted from La Critique de VEcole des Femmes. 
Manly = Alceste ; Freeman = Phihnte ; Olivia = 

Celimene ; Eliza = Eliante ; Novel and Plausible = 

Acaste and Clitandre. 

Playhouse to be Let, The, (1663) by Davenant. 
Act ii. is a translation of Sganarelle, scenes 7, 12, 13, 
being omitted. Cf. ante, p. 79. 

Psyche (1674) by Shadwell. The opera is an adapta- 
tion of Psyche: act i. is composed of selected portions 
of the prologue and Psyche, i. without reference to 
their order in the original ; in act ii. the first two- 
thirds is composed of the rest of Psyche, i. and the 
first intermede ; the last third, of Psyche, ii. con- 



236 APPENDIX 

densed ; acts iii.-v. are paraphrased with some 
shortening from Psyche, iii.-v. 

Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, The, (1696) by 
Vanbrugh. Act i. 3 is a free adaptation from Le 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, ii. 5. Sir Tunbelly and Hoyden 
are a reflection of Sganarelle and Isabelle in L Ecole 
des Maris, probably through The Country Wife. 

St. James's Park. See Love in a Wood. 

Scaramouch (1677) by Ravenscroft. (1) The main 
plot is a close adaptation of Les Fourberies de Scapin. 
(2) The subplot is a close adaptation of Le Mariage 
Force. (3) Act i. (pp. 2-5) is adapted from Le 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, ii. 2, 3 ; act i. (p. 5 f.) was 
suggested by Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, ii. 4 (open- 
ing) ; act ii. (p. 30 ff.) is translated from Le Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme, ii. 4 (first half). Act iv. (p. 58 ff.) 
was suggested by Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, ii. 3. 

ScowRERS, The, (1691) by Shadwell. The relation of 
Eugenia and her governess Priscilla is a reflection of 
the motif of UEcole des Maris. 

Sir Courtly Nice, or It Cannot Be, (1685) by Crowne. 

Act V. (p. 340 f.) was suggested by Les Precieuses 

Ridicules, sc. 9. Act v. (p. 342 ff.) was suggested by 

Les Femmes Savantes, i. 4. 

Lord Bellguard is a reminiscence of Orgon in Le 
Tartuffe. 

Sir Fopling Flutter. See The Man of Mode. 



APPENDIX 237 

Sir Martin Mar-All, or the Feigned Innocence, 
(1667) by Dryden. (1) The play is an adaptation 
of UEtourdi. Acts iii. (largely), iv., v., are adapted 
from UEtourdi, ii., iii., iv. Acts i., ii., are adapted 
from Quinault's L'Amant Indiscret, i., iv. (2) Act v. 
(p. 73 ff.) and a subplot are apparently original with 
Dryden. 

Sir Patient Fancy (1678) by Behn. (1) The Witt- 
more-Fancy and Lodwick-lsabella actions are 
adapted from Le Malade Imaginaire. (2) The Le- 
ander-Lucretia action is developed from hints in Mon- 
sieur de Pourceaugnac, with adaptation (v. pp. 89-96) 
of U Amour Medecin, ii. 2-5. (3) The adaptation as 
a whole is ingeniously managed to produce a comedy 
of intrigue. There is not much paraphrase. 

Sir Salomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb, (1669-70) 
by Caryll. The Sir Salomon action is a close adap- 
tation of UEcole des Femmes. The Wary action is 
constructed as an obverse to it. 
Sir Salomon = Sganarelle ; Ralph and AHce = Alain 

and Georgette; Betty = Agnes; Peregreen = Horace. 

Wary = Chrysalde. Julia (his daughter), Mr. Single 

(Sir Salomon's son), and Sir Arthur Add el are added. 

Soldier's Fortune, The, (1681) by Otway. The 
basis of the main intrigue is UEcole des Maris: act 
ii. (p. 394 ff.) is adapted from UEcole des Maris, ii. 
2; act ii. (pp. 406-9) is adapted from UEcole des 
Maris, ii. 2, 6 ; act iii. (pp. 417-420) was suggested 
by UEcole des Maris, ii. 3 ; act iv. (p. 421 ff.) was 



238 APPENDIX 

suggested by UEcole des Maris, ii. 4, 5. Act ii. 
(pp. 390-4) was suggested by Sganarelle, sc. 9, with 
use of UEcole des Maris, ii. 4, 7 (end). 
Sir Davy Dunce = Sganarelle ; Lady Dunce = Isabelle ; 
Fourbin = Scapin {Les Fourheries de Scapin) . 

Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery, The, 
(1681) by Dryden. Act. i. 2 (p. 430 ff.) is freely 
adapted from UEcole des Femmes, i. 4. Act iv. 1 
(p. 473 f.) is adapted from Le Medecin malgre lui, ii. 5. 

Squire of Alsatia, The, (1688) by Shadwell. The 
basis of the play is UEcole des Maris. Act iv. 
(p. 73) is adapted from UAvare, i. 5. 
Sir WiUiam Belfond is a reminiscence of Harpagon 

in UAvare. The conception also owes something to 

Sganarelle of UEcole des Maris. Sir Edward = Ariste ; 

Belfond Senior and Junior = Isabelle and Leonor. 

Squire Trelooby (1704) by Congreve, Walsh, and 
Vanbrugh. This adaptation of Monsieur de Pour- 
ceaugnac is not extant. 

Stage Beaux tossed in a Blanket, The, (pub. 1704) 
by Brown. Act i. is translated with few changes from 
La Critique de VEcole des Femmes, sc. 1-5, with a 
suggestion from scene 7. Act iv. (pp. 56-9) is adapted 
from Le Tartuffe, iv. 5, iii. 3 (praise of lady), and 
iv. 6. 

Stock Jobbers, The. See The Volunteers. 

Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents, The, (1668) 
by Shadwell. The main points in the plot were sug- 



APPENDIX ' 239 

gested by Le Misanthrope. Act i. contains the fol- 
lowing adapted scenes: Le Misanthrope, i. 1, 2; iii. 
1 ; Les Fdcheux, i. 3. Act ii. contains : Les Fdcheux, 
ii. 3 ; iii. 3. Act iii. contains : Les Fdcheux, ii. 2. 
Act iv. contains : Les Fdcheux, iii. 4 ; Le Misan- 
thrope, ii. 4. 

Stanford = Alceste, weakened to a mere grumbler ; 
Celimene suggested Emilia, a second Alceste. Lovel 
= Philinte ; Carolina = Eliante ; Ninnj'- = Oronte ; 
Lady Vaine = Arsinoe. Woodcock is a combination 
of Lisandre and Ormin in Les Fdcheux; Huffe is a 
combination of Dorante and Alcippe ; Sir Positive 
At-All is a combination of Lisandre and Alcandre in Les 
Fdcheux, and of Acaste in Le Misanthrope, and of 
Pancrace (cf. act iv., p. 87 f,, and Le Mariage Force^ 
sc. 4). 

Tartuffe, or the French Puritan, (1670) by Med- 
bourne. The play is a translation for the stage of 
Le Tartuffe. The only scenes omitted are iv. 8 (last 
half), V. 2, V. 4 (last half), v. 7 (last half). For slight 
changes in plot, see ante, p. 85 ff. 

Tom Essence, or the Modish Wife, (1677) by Rawlins.' 
(1) The basis of the play is Sganarelle, probably in 
Davenant's translation, followed pretty closely in the 
Essence action. (2) The lover of Celie and the girl 
he has married, merely mentioned in Sganarelle, are 
developed, with the addition of a servant, Laurence, 
not mentioned at all, to furnish a second (Loveall- 
Luce) action. (3) A third (Moneylove) action is 
developed by giving the man corresponding to Gorgi- 



240 APPENDIX 

bus a young wife, who has a gallant, Stanley, who at 
one point (ii., pp. 16-18) assumes the disguise of a 
doctor under the influence of some of Mohere's 
doctor scenes. 

Town Sparks, The. See The English Friar. 

Trip to the Jubilee, A. See The Constant Couple. 

Two SosiAs, The. See Amphitryon. 

Twin Rivals, The, (1702) by Farquhar. Act iii. 1 
(p. 52 f.) was suggested by Le Medecin malgre lid, 
iii. 2. Act V. 4 (p. 105 ff.) is freely adapted from 
Le Tartuffe, iv. 5, 6. 

Virtue in Danger. See The Relapse. 

Virtuoso, The, (1676) by Shadwell. The treatment 
of Clarinda and Miranda shows influence from 
UEcole des Maris. Sir Formal, Sir Samuel, and Snarl 
are reminiscences of Acaste, Chtandre, and Alceste 
in Le Misanthrope. 

Volunteers, or the Stock Jobbers, The, (pub. 1693) 
by Shadwell. Teresia owes something to Cathos 
and Madelon in Les Precieuses Ridicules. Mrs. 
Hackwell is a reminiscence of SganareUe in UEcole 
des Maris. 

Wanton Wife, The. See The Amorous Widow. 

Way of the World, The, (1700) by Congreve. Cf. 
ante, p. 198 f. Waitwell's disguise was suggested 
by the plot of Les Precieuses Ridicules. 
Foible is influenced in conception by Moliere's sou- 



APPENDIX 241 

brettes {e.g., Toinette or Lisette). Mrs. Fainall is 
a variation of the motif of L'Ecole des Maris. 

Woman Captain, The, (1680) by Shadwell. Act i. 
(pp. 357 ff.) was suggested by L'Avare, iii. 1. The 
conduct of Mrs. Gripe is a reflection of the UEcole des 
Maris motif. Gripe is a reminiscence of Harpagon 
in L'Avare. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. TEXTS 

The following list aims to give the full titles of the 
books cited in the preceding pages. Where more than 
one edition is given, it is because of introductory matter 
having some bearing on the subject. In such cases the 
edition to which reference is made in the notes is always 
specified. 

Behn, Mrs. Aphra, The Plays, Histories, and Novels of 
the ingenious . . . , with Life and Memoirs. Com- 
plete in Six Volumes. London, 1871. 

Betterton, Thomas, The Amorous Widow: or, the 
Wanton Wife. A Comedy. As it is Performed by 
Her Majesty's Servants. Written by the late Famous 
Mr. Thomas Betterton. Now first Printed from the 
Original Copy. London : Printed in the Year 1710. 

[Brown, Thomas], The Stage- Beaux toss'd in a Blanket : 
or, Hypocrisie Alamode; Exposed in a True Picture 

of Jerry A Pretending Scourge to the English Stage. 

A Comedy with a Prologue on Occasional Conformity; 
being a full Explanation of the Poussin Doctor's Book; 
and an Epilogue on the Reformers. Spoken at the 
Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. London, Printed, and 
Sold by J. Nutt, near Stationers-Hall, 1704. 
243 



244 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

[Caryll, John], Sir Salomon; or, the Cautious Coxcomb, 
a Comedy. Acted By Their Majesties Servants. By 
Mr. Caryl. London, Printed for H, Herringman, 
and Sold by Jacob Tonson, at the Judges-Head in 
Chancery-Lane near Fleetstreet, 169L 

Centlivre, Mrs. [Susanna], The Dramatic Works of 
the Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre, with A New Account 
of her Life. Complete in Three Volumes. London, 
1872. 

CoNGREVE, William, The Comedies of, with an in- 
troduction by G. S. Street. In two volumes. London, 
1895. [In English Classics, edited by W. E. Henley.] 

CoNGREVE, William, [The Complete Plays of.] Edited 
by Alex[ander] Charles Ewald. New York, — . [In 
The Mermaid Series.] Quotations are from this 
edition. 

[Corey, John], The Metamorphosis: or, the Old Lover 
Out-witted. A Farce. As it is now Acted at the New 
Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields. Written Originally 
by the Famous Moliere. London : Printed for Ber- 
nard Lintott at the Middle-Temple Gate in Fleet- 
street. 1704. 

Crowne, John, The Dramatic Works of, with prefatory 
memoir and notes. Edinburgh and London, 1873-4. 
[In Dramatists of the Restoration, edited by James 
Maidment and W. H. Logan.] 

D'Avenant, Sir William, The Dramatic Works of, 
with prefatory memoir and notes. Edinburgh and 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 

London, 1872-4. [In Dramatists of the Restoration, 
edited by James Maidment and W. H. Logan.] 

DoDSLEY, Robert, A Select Collection of Old English 
Plays. Originally published by Robert Dodsley in the 
year 1744. Fourth Edition, now first chronologically 
arranged, revised and enlarged with the notes of all the 
commentators, and new notes by W. Carew Hazlitt. 
Volume the fifteenth. London, 1876. [Contains 
The Adventures of Five Hours, by Tuke, and Historia 
Histrionica, by Wright.] 

The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, 
and Farquhar, With Biographical and Critical Notices 
by Leigh Hunt. A New Edition. London and New 
York, 1875. 

Dryden, John, Essays of, Selected and edited by W. P. 
Ker. [In two volumes.] Oxford, 1900. 

Dryden, John, The Works of, illustrated with notes, 
historical, critical, and explanatory, and a life of the 
author, by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Revised and corrected 
by George Saintsbury. Edinburgh, 1882-1893. 

Durfey, Thomas, The Fond Husband: or, the Plotting 
Sisters. A Comedy as it is acted at the Theatre-Royal 
in Drury Lane. Written by Tho. Durfey, Gent. 
London, 1735. 

Etheredge, Sir George, The Works of, Plays and 
Poems. Edited, with critical notes and introduction, 
by A. Wilson Verity. London, 1888. 

Farquhar, George, The Dramatic Works of, edited 



246 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

with a life and notes by Alex[ander] Charles Ewald. 
In two volumes. London, 1892. 

FouRNEL, Victor, Les Contemporains de Moliere. 
Recueil de comedies, rares ou peu connues, jouees de 
1650 a 1680, avec Vhistoire de chaque theatre, des notes 
et notices biographiques, bibliographiques et critiques. 
Paris, 1863-6. 

Lacy, John, The Dramatic Works of, with prefatory 
memoir and notes. Edinburgh and London, 1875. 
[In Dramatists of the Restoration, edited by James 
Maidment and W. H. Logan.] 

Medbourne, M[atthew], Tartuffe: or the French 
Puritan. A Comedy, Lately Acted at the Theatre 
Royal. Written in French by Moliere; and rendered 
into English with Much Addition and Advantage, By 
M. Medbourne, Servant to his Royal Highness. Lon- 
don : Printed by H. L. and R. B. for James Magnus 
at the Posthouse in Russel-street near the Piazza in 
Covent Garden, 1670. 

Moliere, (Euvres completes de. Oxford, 1900. [Re- 
produces the Despois-Mesnard text in a single 
volume.] 

Moliere, GEuvres de. Nouvelle edition revue sur les plus 
anciennes impressions et augmentee des variantes, de 
notices, de notes, d'un lexique des mots et locutions 
remarquables, de portraits, de facsimile, etc. Par 
MM. Eugene Despois et Paul Mesnard. Paris, 1873- 
1900. [Dans la Collection des Grands Ecrivains 
de la France.] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 247 

MoTTEUx [Pierre Antoine], The Loves of Mars & 
Venus. A Play set to Music, As it is Acted at the 
New Theatre, in Little Lincolns Inn-Fields. By His 
Majesty's Servants. Written by Mr. Motteux. Lon- 
don, Printed, and are to be sold at the New Theatre, 
m Little Lincolns-Inn-Fields. 1696. 

Otway, Thomas, [The Best Plays of.] With an In- 
troduction and Notes, by The Hon. Roden Noel. Lon- 
don and New York, — . [In The Mermaid Series.] 

Otway, Thomas, The Works of, consisting of his Plays, 
Poems, and Letters. With a Sketch of his Life, en- 
larged from that written by Dr. Johnson. In two 
volumes. London, 1812. Quotations are from this 
edition. 

Otway, Thomas, The Works of, in three volumes. With 
Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Life of the 
Author, By Thomas Thornton, Esq. London, 1813. 

Ravenscroft, Edward, The Canterbury Guests; or, 
a Bargain Broken. A Comedy. Acted at The Theatre- 
Royal. Written by Mr. . . . , London, Printed for 
Daniel Brown at the Bible without Temple-Barr ; 
and John Walthoe, at his Shop in Vine-Court, 
Middle-Temple, 1695. 

Ravenscroft, Edward, The Careless Lovers : A Comedy 
Acted at the Duke's Theatre. Written by Edward 
Ravenscrofts, Gent. London, Printed for WiUiam 
Cademan, at the Popes Head in the Lower Walk 
in the New Exchange, 1673. 



248 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ravenscroft, Edward, The Citizen turned Gentleman : 
a Comedy. Acted at the Duke's Theatre. By Edw. 
Ravenscroft. Gent. London, Printed for Thomas 
Dring, at the White-Lyon next Chancery-Lane end 
in Fleetstreet, 1672. Quotations are from this edition. 

Ravenscroft, Edward, The London Cuckolds. A 
Comedy; As it is Acted at The Duke's Theatre. By 
Edward Ravenscroft, Gent. London, Printed for Jos. 
Hindmarsh at the Sign of the Black-Bull near the 
Royal-Exchange in Cornhill, Anno Dom., 1682. 

Ravenscroft, Edward, Mamamouchi, or the Citizen 
turned Gentleman: a Comedy Acted at the Duke's Thea- 
tre. By Edw. Ravenscroft. Gent. London, Printed for 
Thomas Dring, at the Corner of Chancery-Lane, over 
against the Inner Temple Gate in Fleetstreet, 1675. 

Ravenscroft, Edward, Scaramouch a Philosopher, 
Harlequin a School-Boy, Bravo, Merchant, and Magi- 
cian. A Comedy After the Italian manner. Acted at 
the Theatre-Royal. Written by Mr. . . . Printed for 
Robert Sollers at the Flying Horse in St. Pauls 
Church-yard, 1677. 

[Rawlins, Thomas], Tom Essence: or. The Modish 
Wife. A Comedy. As it is Acted at the Duke's 
Theatre. Licensed, Novemh. the Uh. 1676. Roger 
L' Estrange. London, Printed by T. M. for W. 
Cademan, at the Popes-Head in the Lower Walk 
of the New-Exchange in the Strand, 1677. 

Sedley, Sir Charles, Bart., The Works of the Hon- 
ourable, In Prose and Verse. In Two Volumes. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 

Containing the Translations of VirgiVs Pastorals, the 
Battle and Government of Bees, &c. With his Speeches, 
Political Pieces, Poems, Songs and Plays, the greatest 
Part never printed before, . . . With Memoirs of 
the Author's Life, Written by an Eminent Hand. 
London, 1778. 

Shad WELL, Thomas, [The Best Plays of.] Edited, with 
an Introduction and Notes, by George Saintsbury. 

London and New York, . [In The Mermaid 

Series] 

Shad WELL, Thomas, Esq., The Dramatick Works of; 
In four volumes. London, 1720. Quotations are 
from this edition. 

Southerne, Thomas, Esq., Plays written by . . . 
Now first collected. With An Account of the Life and 
Writings of the Author. London, 1774. 

[Tomkis, Thomas], Albumazar. A Comedy presented 
before the Kings Maiesty at Cambridge. By the 
Gentlemen of Trinity Colledge. Newly revised and 
corrected by a speciall Hand. London, Printed by 
Nicholas Okes, 1634. 

TuKE, Sir Samuel, The Adventures of Five Hours. See 
Dodsley. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, Edited by W[illiam] C. Ward. 
In two volumes. London, 1893. Quotations are from 
this edition. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, [The Select Plays of.] Edited, 
with an Introduction and Notes, by A. E. H. Swaen. 



250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

London and New York, 1896. [In The Mermaid 
Series.] 

Wright, Thomas, The Female Vertuoso's. A Comedy: 
As it is Acted at the Queen's Theatre, By their Majesties 
Servants. Written by Mr. . . . London, Printed 
by J. Wilde, for R. Vincent, in Cliffords-Inn-lane, 
Fleet-street, 1693. 

Wycherley, William, [The Complete Plays of.] 
Edited with Introduction and Notes by W. C. Ward. 
London and New York, — . [In The Mermaid Series.] 
Quotations are from this edition. 



II. GENERAL WORKS AND SPECIAL 
STUDIES 

This bibliography does not embrace all the works 
consulted in the preparation of the preceding chapters, 
but only those bearing on some phase of the subject 
as there treated, chiefly for the purpose of giving full 
titles of books referred to in the notes. Very few titles 
for Moliere have been included, since the bibliography 
by Currier and Gay will indicate what has been at my 
disposal. I have tried to make the titles exact, but 
not always complete. As in the first section, date and 
place of pubhcation have been reduced to a uniform 
style. 

Albrecht, L., Dryden's "Sir Martin Mar-alV^ in 
Bezug auf seine Quellen. [Dissertation, Rostock] 
Rostock, 1906. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 

Archer, William, The Comedies of Congreve. [In 
The Forum, vol. xliii. New York, 1910.] 

[Baker, David Erskine], The Companion to the Play- 
house: or. An Historical Account of all the Dramatic 
Writers {and their Works) that have appeared in Great 
Britain and Ireland, from the Commencement of our 
Theatrical Exhibitions, down to the Present Year 1764. 
Composed in the Form of a Dictionary, For the more 
readily turning to any particular Author, or Perform- 
ance. In Two Volumes. London : Printed for T. 
Becket and P. A. Dehondt, in the Strand ; C. Hen- 
derson, at the Royal Exchange ; and T. Davies, 
in Russel-Street, Covent-Garden. 1764. 

Bartoli, Adolfo, Scenari inediti delta commedia del- 
Varte. Contributo alia storia del teatro popolare italiano. 
Firenze, 1880. [In Raccolta di opere inedite o rare di 
ogni secolo delta letteratura italiana.] 

Beljamb, Alexandre, Le Public et les hommes de lettres 
en Angleterre au dix-huitieme siecle 1660-1744 (Dryden- 
Addison-Pope). Ouvrage couronne par V Academic 
frangaise. Deuxieme edition augmentee d'un index. 
Paris, 1897. 

Belloni, Antonio, II Seicento. Milano, . [In 

Storia letteraria d'ltalia scritta da una societd di 
professori.] 

Bennewitz, Alexander, Congreve und Moliere. Lit- 
erar-Historische Untersuchung. Leipzig, 1890. 

Bennewitz, Alexander, Moliere's Einfluss auf Con- 
greve. [Dissertation, Leipzig] Leipzig, 1889. 



252 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BoBERTAG, Felix, Zu John Dryden. [In Englische 
Studien. Organ fur englische Philologie unter Mithe- 
rucksichtigung des englischen Unterrichtes auf hoheren 
Schulen. Herausgegeben von Dr. Eugen Kolbing. 
IV Band. Heilbronn, 1881.] 

Brunetiere, F[erdinand], Les Epoques de la comedie 
de Moliere. [Dans la Revue de deux mondes. Ixxvi ® 
annee — cinquieme periode. Tome trent-et-unieme. 
Paris, 1906.] 

BuRGHCLERE, WiNiFRED, Lady, George Villiers, Second 
Duke of Buckingham. 1628-1687. A Study in the 
History of the Restoration. With portraits and illus- 
trations. London, 1903. 

[Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury], Some 
Passages of the Life and Death of the Right Honourable 
John, Earl of Rochester. Reprinted in facsimile from 
the Edition of 1680. With an Introductory Preface 
by Lord Ronald Gower. London, 1875. 

Canfield, Dorothea Frances, Corneille and Racine 
in England. A Study of the English Translations of 
the two Corneilles and Racine, with especial Reference 
to their Presentation on the English Stage. [Disserta- 
tion, Columbia] New York, 1904. 

Chase, Lewis Nathaniel, The English Heroic Play. 
[Dissertation, Columbia] New York, 1903. 

Charlanne, Louis, Ulnfluence frangaise en Angleterre 
an xvii ^ siecle. La vie sociale — la vie litteraire. 
Etude sur les relations socialcs et litteraires de la 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 

France et de VAngleterre surtout dans la seconde 
moitie du XVII ^ siecle. Paris, 1906. 

Chatfield-Taylor, H[obart] C[hatfield], Moliere, 
a Biography. With an introduction by Thomas 
Frederick Crane. Illustrations by JoB. New York, 
1906. 

Gibber, Collet, An Apology for the Life of, written 
by himself. A New Edition with Notes and Supple- 
ment by Robert W. Lowe. With twenty-six mezzotint 
portraits by R. B. Parkes, and eighteen etchings by 
Adolphe Lalauze. In two volumes. London, 1889. 

Collins, George Stuart, Dryden's Dramatic Theory 
and Praxis. [Dissertation, Leipzig] Leipzig-Reud- 
nitz, 1892. 

Collins, John Churton, Essays and Studies. Lon- 
don, 1895. 

CoRRADiNO, CoRRADO, II Seccntismo e VAdone del cava- 
lier Marino. Consider azione critiche. Torino, 1880. 

CouRTHOPE, W[illiam] J[ohn], A History of English 
Poetry. Vol. IV. Development and Decline of the 
Poetic Drama: Influence of the Court and the People. 
London, 1903. 

Crull, Franz, Thomas ShadwelVs {John OzelVs) und 
Henry Fielding's Comoedien "The Miser'' in ihrem 
Verhdltnis unter einander und zu ihrer gemeinsamen 
Quelle. [Dissertation, Rostock] Rostock, 1899. 

Cunningham, Peter, The Story of Nell Gwyn and the 
Sayings of Charles II. Related and collected by 



254 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Peter Cunningham, with the author's latest corrections, 
portraits and all the original illustrations. Edited, 
with introduction, additional notes, and a life of the 
author, by Henry B. Wheatley. London, 1896. [In 
Memoir Library.] 

CuKRiER and Gay, Catalogue of the Moliere Collection 
in Harvard College Library. Acquired chiefly from 
the library of the late Ferdinand Bocher. Compiled 
by Thomas Franklin Currier and Ernest Lewis Gay. 
Cambridge, Mass. 1906. [No. 57 in Bibliograph- 
ical Contributions, edited by William Coolidge Lane.] 

Dametz, Max, John Vanbrughs Leben und Werke. 
Wien und Leipzig, 1898. [In Wiener Beitrage zur 
englischen Philologie. . . . Herausgegeben von Dr. 
J. Schipper. VII Band.] 

Dekker, Thomas, The GidVs Horn-book, edited by E. 
B. McKerrow. London, 1904. [In The King's 
Library, edited by Professor Gollancz.] 

[Dennis, John], A Defence of Sir Fopling Flutter, a 
Comedy written by Sir George Etheridge. In which 
defence is shewn. That Sir Fopling, that merry Knight, 
was rightly composed by the Knight his Father, to 
ansv)er the Ends of Comedy; and that he has been bar- 
barously and scurrilously attacked by the Knight his 
Brother, in the Q5th Spectator. By which it appears. 
That the latter Knight knows nothing of the Nature of 
Comedy. London : Printed for T. Warner, at the 
Black Boy in Pater-noster Row. 1722. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 

Dennis, [John], Some Remarkable Passages of the Life 
of Mr. Wycherley. [In] A New Collection of Mis- 
cellanies in Prose and Verse, [by Richardson Pack]. 
London ; Printed for E. Curll, in the Strand. 1725. 

Despois, Eugene, Le Theatre frangais sous Louis 
XIV. Quatrieme edition. Paris, 1894. 

DiBDiN, [Charles], A Complete History of the English 
Stage. Introduced by a comparative and compre- 
hensive review of the Asiatic, the Grecian, the Roman, 
the Spanish, the Italian, the Portugese, the German, 
the French, and Other Theatres, and involving Biographi- 
cal Tracts and Anecdotes, instructive and amusing, 
concerning a prodigious number of Authors, Composers, 
Painters, Actors, Singers, and Patrons of Dramatic 
Productions in all countries. The whole written with 
the assistance of interesting documents, collected in 
the course of five and thirty years. London, [1800]. 

Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by LesHe 
Stephen and Sidney Lee. London, 1885-1904. 

DoRAN, [John], "Their Majesties Servants^* Annals of 
the English Stage from Thomas Betterton to Edmund 
Kean. Edited and Revised by Robert W. Lowe. With 
fifty copperplate portraits and eighty wood engravings. In 
three volumes. London, 1888. 

Downes,"John, Roscius Anglicanus, or, an Historical 
Review of the Stage From 1660 to 1706. A Facsimile 
Reprint of the Rare Original of 1708. With an His- 
torical Preface by Joseph Knight. London, 1886. 



256 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Elton, Oliver, The Augustan Ages. New York, 1899. 
[In Periods of European Literature, edited by Pro- 
fessor Saintsbury.] 

Erichsen, Asmus, Thomas ShadwelVs Komodie ''The 
Sullen Lovers'' in ihrem Verhdltnis zu Moliere's "Le 
Misanthrope'' und '' Les Fdcheux." [Dissertation, 
Kiel] Flensburg, 1906. 

Ferchlandt, Hans, Moliere's Misanthrop und seine 
englische Nachahmungen. [Dissertation, Halle] Halle, 
1907. 

Fischer, R[udolf], Thomas Middleton. Eine liter- 
arhistorische Skizze. [In Festschrift zum viii. allge- 
meinen deutschen Neuphilologentage in Wien Pfingsten 
1898. Verfasst von Mitgliedern der Osterreichischen 
Universitdten and des wiener neupholologischen Vereins. 
Herausgegeben von J. Schipper. Wien und Leipzig, 
1898.] 

Fitzgerald, Percy [Hethrington], A New History 
of the English Stage from the Restoration to the Liberty 
of the Theatres, in Connection with the Patent Houses, 
From Original Papers in the Lord Chamberlain's 
Office, the State Paper Office, and other Sources. In 
two volumes. London, 1882. 

Flamini, Francesco, U Cinquecento. Milano, . 

[In Storia letteraria d' Italia scritta da una societd di 
professori.] 

Fleay, Frederick Gard, A Chronicle History of the 
London Stage (1559-1642). London, 1890. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 

FouRNEL, Victor, Le Thedtre au XVII ^ siecle. La 
\Comedie. Paris, 1892. 

Garnett, R[ichard], The Age of Dryden. London, 
1903. [In Handbooks of English Literature, edited by- 
Professor Hales.] , 

[Genest, John], Some Account of the English Stage, 
from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830. In ten volumes. 
Bath, 1832. 

[GiLDON, Charles], The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton, 
The Late Eminent Tragedian. Wherein The Action 
and Utterance of the Stage, Bar, and Pulpit, are dis- 
tinctly considered. With the Judgment of the late 
Ingenious Monsieur de St. Evremond, upon the Italian 
and French Music and Opera's; in a Letter to the 
Duke of Buckingham. To which is added, The Amor- 
ous Widow, or the Wanton Wife. A Comedy. Written 
by Mr. Betterton. Now first printed from the Original 
Copy. London : Printed for Robert Gosling, at 
the Mitre, near the Inner-Temple Gate in Fleet- 
street. 1710. 

[GiLDON, Charles], The Lives and Characters of the 
English Dramatic Poets. Also An Exact Account of 
all the Plays that were ever yet Printed in the English 
Tongue; their Double Titles, the Places where Acted, 
the Dates ivhen Printed, and the Persons to whom Ded- 
icated; loith Remarks and Observations on most of 
the said Plays. First begun by Mr. Langbain, im- 
proved and continued down to this Time, by a Careful 
Hand. London : Printed for Tho. Leigh at the 



258 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Peacock against St. Dunstan's-Church, and William 
Turner at the White Horse, without Temple-Bar. 
[1699.] 

GossE, Edmund, A History of Eighteenth Century 
Literature (1660-1780). London, 1889. 

GossE, Edmund, Life of William Congreve. London, 
1888. 

GossE, Edmund W[illiam], Seventeenth Century Studies. 
A Contribution to the History of English Poetry. Lon- 
don, 1883. 

Grisy, A[mbroise] de, Etude sur Thomas Otway. Paris, 

1868. 

Grisy, A[mbroise] de, Histoire de la comedie anglaise 
au dix-septieme siecle (1672-1707). Paris, 1878. 

Grosse, Wilhelm, John Crowne's Komodien und bur- 
leske Dichtung. [Dissertation, Leipzig] Lucka, 1903. 

Hallbauer, 0., George Farquhar^s life and works. 
Beilage zum Program des herzoglichen Gymnasiums 
zu Holzminden. Holzminden, 1880. 

Hartmann, Carl, Einfluss Moliere's auf Dryden's 
Komisch-Dramatische Dichtungen. [Dissertation, Leip- 
zig] Leipzig, 1885. 

Harvey-Jellie, W., Les Sources du theatre anglais a 
Vepoque de la Restauration. [Dissertation, Paris] 
Paris, 1906. 

Hatcher, Orie Latham, John Fletcher. A Study in 
Dramatic Method. [Dissertation, Chicago] Chicago, 
1905. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 

Hazlitt, William, The Collected Works of. Edited by 
A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, with an introduction 
by W. E. Henley. London and New York, 1902-4. 

Hettner, Hermann, Geschichte der englischen Literatur 
von der Wiederherstellung des Konigthums bis in die 
zweite Hdlfte des achzehnten Jahrhunderts. 1660- 
1770. Funfte verbesserte Auflage. Braunschweig, 
1894. 

HoHRMANN, Friedrich, Das Verhdltniss Susanna Cent- 
livre^s zu Moliere und Regnard. [In Zeitschrift fur 
vergleichende Litter atur geschichte. Herausgegeben von 
Dr. Max Koch. Vierzehnter Band. Berhn, 1901.] 

HoLZHAUSEN, P[aul], Drydcn's Heroisches Drama. 
[In Englische Studien, xiii., xv., xvi. Heilbronn, 1889, 
und Leipzig, 1891, 1892.] 

HuszAR, GuiLLAUME, MoUcrc et VEspagne. Paris, 
1907. [II. in Etudes critiques de litterature comparee.] 

[Hutchinson], Lucy [Apsley], Memoirs of the Life of 
Colonel Hutchinson. Governor of Nottingham, by 
his Widow Lucy. Edited from the original manu- 
script by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson. To which are 
added the letters of Colonel Hutchinson and other papers. 
Revised with additional notes by C. H. Firth. With 
ten etched portraits of eminent personages. In two 
volumes. London, 1885. 

[Jacob, Giles], The Poetical Register: or, the Lives and 
Characters of all the English Poets. With an Account 
of their Writings. Adorned with curious Sculptures 
engraven by the best Masters. [In two volumes.] 



260 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

London : Printed, and Sold by A. Bettesworth, 
W. Taylor, and J. Batley, in Paternoster Row; 
. . . 1723. 

Johnson, Samuel, Lives of the English Poets, edited by 
George Birbeck Hill, . . . with brief memoir of Dr. 
Birbeck Hill, by his nephew, Harold Spencer Scott. 
In three volumes. Oxford, 1905. 

Kerby, W. Moseley, Moliere and the Restoration 
Comedy in England. [Dissertation, Rennes] [Pri- 
vately printed, 1907.] 

Klette, Johannes, William Wycherley's Leben und 
dramatische Werke. [Dissertation, Miinster] Mtinster, 
1883. 

Krause, Hugo, Wycherley und seine franzosische 
Quellen. [Dissertation, Halle] Halle, 1883. 

Lamb, Charles, The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, 
edited by E. V. Lucas. New York and London, 
1903-1905. 

Langbaine, Gerard, An Account of the English Dra- 
matick Poets. Or, Some Observations And Remarks 
On the Lives and Writings, of all those that have Pub- 
lished either Comedies, Tragedies, Tragi-Comedies, 
Pastorals, Masques, Interludes, Farces, or Opera^s in 
the English Tongue. Oxford, Printed by L. L. for 
George West, and Henry Clements. An. Dom. 
1691. 

Lanson, Gustave, Moliere et la farce. [Dans la Revue 
de Paris. Huitieme ann^e. Tome troisieme. Mai 
-juin 1901.] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 261 

Larroumet, Gustave, La Comedie de Moliere. 
UAuteur et le milieu. Sixieme edition. Paris, 1903. 

Laun, Henri van, The Dramatic Works of Moliere 
rendered into English. With a prefatory memoir, 
introductory notices, appendices and notes. Edin- 
burgh, 1875-6. 

Lavisse, Ernest, Histoire de France depuis les origines 
jiLsqu'd la Revolution. P^iiblie avec la collaboration 
de M. Bayet, Bloch, . . . Tome septieme. I^ 
Louis XIV. La Fronde. Le Roi. Colbert. (1643- 
1685) par E. Lavisse. Paris, 1906. II. Louis 
XIV. La Religion. Les Lettres et les arts. La 
Guerre. (1643-1685) par E. Lavisse. Paris, 1906. 

The Life and Times of that Excellent and Renowned 
Actor Thomas Betterton, Of the Duke's and United 
Companies, at the Theatres in Portugal Street, Dorset 
Gardens, Drury Lane, &c., during the latter half of 
the seventeenth century. With such Notices of the 
Stage and English History, before and after the Res- 
toration, as serve generally to illustrate the subject. 
By the Author and Editor of the Lives of ''Mrs. Abing- 
don," "James Quin," etc., etc. London, 1888. 

LissNER, Max, Sir Charles Sedley's Leben und Werke. 
[In Anglia. Zeitschrift fiir englische Philologie. . . . 
Band 27. Neue Folge Band 16. Halle, 1905.] 

LivET, Ch[arles]-L[ouis], Precieux et precieuses. 
Caracteres et mceurs litter aires du xvii^ siecle. Trois- 
idme edition. Paris, 1895. 

LoHR, Anton, Richard Flecknoe. Eine liter arhis- 



262 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

torische Untersuchung. Leipzig, 1905. [In Mun- 
chener Beitrdge zur romanischen und englischen Phi- 
lologie. Herausgegeben von H. Breymann und J. 
Schick. XXXIIL] 

LouNSBURY, Thomas R[aynesford], Shakespeare as a 
Dramatic Artist, with an account of his reputation 
at various periods. New York and London, 1901. 

Lowe, Robert W[illiam], A Bibliographical Account 
of English Theatrical Literature from the earliest times 
to the present day. London, 1888. 

Lowe, Robert W[illiam], Thomas Betterton. New 
York, 1891. 

[Macaulay, Thomas Babington], The Works of Lord 
Macaulay Complete. Edited by his sister, Lady Tre- 
velyan. In eight volumes. London, 1879. 

Malone, Edmond, The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose 
Works of John Dry den, now first collected : with notes 
and illustrations; an account of the life and writings 
of the author, grounded on original and authentick 
documents; and a collection of his letters, the greater 
part of which has never before been published. Lon- 
don, 1800. 

Martinenche, E[rnest], Moliere et le thedtre espagnol. 
Paris, 1906. 

[Matthews, Brander], Molisre. [In The Edinburgh 
Review. Vol. CCXI, No. 431. January, 1910.] 

Meindl, Vincenz, Sir George Etheredge, sein Leben, 
seine Zeit und seine Dramen. Wien und Leipzig, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 

1901. [In Wiener Beitrage zur englischen Philologie. 

. . . Herausgegeben von Dr. J. Schipper. XIV 

Band.] 
Meredith, George, An Essay on Comedy and the Uses 

of the Comic Spirit. Second edition. Westminster, 

1898. 
MoLAND, Louis, Moliere et la comedie italienne. Ou- 

vrage illustre de vingt vignettes representant les princi- 

paux types du theatre italien. Deuxieme edition. 

Paris, 1867. 
Molieriste, Le, Revue mensuelle, publiee avec le concours 

de MM: ... par Georges MonvaL Paris, 1879- 

1888. 
Ohlsen, Friedr[ich], Dryden as Dramatist and Critic. 

JahreS'Bericht des Realgymnasiums und der Real- 

schule zu Altona . . . Altona, 1883. 
Ohnsorg, Richard, John Lacy's ^'Dumb Lady," Mrs. 

Susanna Centlivre's "Love's Contrivance," und Henry 

Fielding's "Mock Doctor" in ihrem Verhdltnis zu 

einander und zu ihrer gemeinschaftlichen Quelle. 

[Dissertation, Rostock] Hamburg, 1900. 

Ott, Philipp, Uber das Verhdltniss des Lustspiel- 
Dichters Dryden zur gleichzeitigen franzosischen Ko- 
modie, insbesondere zu Moliere. Programm der Kgl. 
Bayer. Studien-Anstalt Landshut fUr das Schuljahr 
1887-8. 

Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of . . . Clerk of the Acts 
and Secretary to the Admiralty. Completely tran- 
scribed by the late Rev. My nor s Bright, from the short- 



264 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

hand manuscript in the Pepysian Library, Magda- 
lene College, Cambridge. With Lord Braybrooke's 
Notes. Edited with additions by Henry B. Wheatley. 
London, 1893-9. 

Petit de Julleville, L[ouis], Histoire de la langue 
et de la litter ature frangaise des origines a 1900. 
Publi6e sous la direction de . . . Paris, 1896-9. 

Pluckhahn, Edmund, Die Bearbeitung ausldndischer 
Stoffe im englischen Drama am Ende des 17. Jahr- 
hunderts dargelegt an Sir Charles Sedley^s : The Mul- 
berry Garden und Bellamira or the Mistress. [Disserta- 
tion, Rostock] [Hamburg, 1904]. 

Prynne, William, Histrio-mastix. The Players 
Scvrge, or, Actors Tragcedie, Divided into Two Parts. 
. . . London, Printed by E. A. and W. I. for Michael 
Sparke, and are to be sold at the Blue Bible, in Greene 
Arbour, in httle Old Bayly. 1633. 

QuAAS, Curt, William Wycherley als Mensch und 
Dichter. Ein Beitrag zur englischen Literaturge- 
schichte des Restaurationszeitalters. [Dissertation, Ros- 
tock] Rostock, 1907. 

Reihmann, Oskar, Thomas Shadwells Tragodie "The 
Libertine" und ihr Verhdltnis zu den vorausgehenden 
Bearbeitungen der Don Juan-Sage. [Dissertation, 
Leipzig] Leipzig, 1904. 

Reinhardtstoettner, Karl von, Plautus. Spdtere 
Bearbeitungen plautinischer Lustspiele. Ein Beitrag 
zur vergleichenden Litter aturgeschichte. Leipzig, 1886. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 

RiEDEL, Otto, Dry den's influence on the dramatical 
literature of England. [Dissertation, Rostock] Cros- 
sen, 1868. 

RosBUND, Max, Dryden als Shakspeare-Bearbeiter. 
[Dissertation, Halle] Halle, 1882. 

Saintsbury, G[eorge], Dryden. New York, — . [In 
English Men of Letters.] 

Sandmann, Paul, Molieres "Ecole des Femmes^' und 
Wycherleys '' Country Wife." [In Archiv fiir das 
Studium der neureren Sprachen und Litteraturen. 
Herausgegeben von Ludwig Herrig. XXXVIII. 
Jahrgang, 72 Band. Braunschweig, 1884.] 

ScHERiLLO, Michele, La Commedia delV arte in Italia. 
Studi e profili. Torino, 1884. 

ScHMiD, D., George Farquhar, sein Leben und seine 
Original-Dramen. Wien und Leipzig, 1904. [In 
Wiener Beitrdge zur englischen Philologie . . . Her- 
ausgegeben von Dr. J. Schipper. XVIII. Band.] 

ScHMiD, D., William Congreve, sein Leben und seine 
Lustspiele. Wien und Leipzig, 1897. [In Wiener 
Beitrdge zur englischen Philologie . . . Herausgegeben 
von Dr. J. Schipper. VI. Band.] 

Schroder, Edwin, Dryden's letztes Drama. Love 
Triumphant or Nature will Prevail. [Dissertation, 
Rostock] Rostock, 1905. 

Seibt, Robert, Die Komodien der Mrs. Centlivre. [In 
Anglia. Zeitschrift fiXr englische Philologie. Band 



266 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

XXXII. NeueFolgeBandXX. und Band XXXII I. 
Neue Folge Band XXL Halle, 1909-1910.] 

Sherwood, Margaret, Dryden's Dramatic Theory and 
Practice. [Dissertation, Yale] Boston, 1898 [Yale 
Studies in English, IV.] 

Smith, Winifred, Italian and Elizabethan Comedy. 
[In Modern Philology, volume five, 1907-8.] 

Spence, Joseph, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, 
of Books and Men. Collected from the conversation 
of Mr. Pope, and other eminent persons of his time. 
With notes, and a life of the author. By Samuel 
Welter Singer. Second Edition. London, 1858. 

Steiger, August, Thomas ShadwelVs "Libertine.** 
A Complementary Study to the Don Juan-literature. 
[In Untersuchungen zur neueren Sprach- und Litera- 
turgeschichte. Herausgegeben von Professor Dr. 
Oskar F. Walzel. 5. Heft.] Bern, 1904. 

Syle, L[ouis] DuPONT, Essays in Dramatic Criticism, 
with Impressions of Some Modern Plays. New York, 
[1898]. 

Taine, H[yppolite], Histoire de la litterature anglaise. 
Huitieme edition revue et augmentee d'un index bio- 
graphique et bibliographique. Paris, 1892. 

Thorndike, Ashley H., Tragedy. Boston and New 
York, [1908]. [In The Types of English Literature, 
under the general editorship of Professor William 
A. Neilson.] 

Thompson, Elbert N. S., The Controversy between the 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 

Puritans and the Stage. [Dissertation, Yale] New 
York, 1903. [Yale Studies in English, XX.] 

Ward, Adolphus William, A History of English 
Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne. 
New and revised edition [in three volumes]. London 
and New York, 1899. 

Wernicke, Arthur, Das Verhdltnis von John Lacys 
"The Dumb Lady, or the Farrier made Physician'^ zu 
Moliere's "Le Medecin malgre lui" und "U Amour 
medecin.^' [Dissertation, Halle] Halle, 1903. 

Weselmann, Franz, Dryden als Kritiker. [Disserta- 
tion, Gottingen] Mtilheim, 1893. 

Whincop, Thomas, Scanderbeg: or. Love and Liberty. 
A Tragedy. Written by the late Thomas Whincop, 
Esq. To which are added A List of all the Dramatic 
Authors, with some Account of their Lives; and of 
all the Dramatic Pieces ever published in the English 
Language, to the Year 1747. London : Printed for 
W. Reeve at Shakspear's Head, Serjeant's-Inn-Gate, 
in Fleet-street. 1747. 

Windsor, Arthur Lloyd, Ethica: or, Characteristics 
of Men, Manners, and Books. London, 1860. 

[Wright, James], Historia Histrionica. An Historical 
Account of the English-Stage; showing the Ancient 
Uses, Improvement, and Perfection of Dramatic Rep- 
resentations, in this Nation. In a Dialogue, of 
Plays and Players. London, Printed by G. Groom, 
for William Haws, at the Rose in Ludgate-Street. 
1699. [In Hazlitt's Dodsley, XV.] 



268 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

WtJLLENWEBER, Albert, Mts. Ceutlwre's Lustspiel 
"Love's Contrivance ' ' und seine Quellen. [Dissertation, 
Halle] Halle, 1900. 

WuRZBACH, Wolfgang von, George Etheredge. [In 
Englische Studien, 27 Band. Leipzig, 1900.] 



INDEX 



Adventures of Five Hours, 60, 

103. 
Albumazar, 82. 
Alchemist, 25, 43. 
Amants Magnifiques, 11. 
Amour Medecin, 89, 90. 
Amphitryon, Dryden's, 85, 87, 

157 f., 173 f. 
Amphitryon, Moli^re's, 23, 173. 
Aristophanes, 6. 
Audience of Moli^re, 22, 
Audiences, pre-Restoration, 

46 ff. 
Restoration, 52 ff . 
Avare, 13, 97, 105, 122, 129, 

130, 145, 158 f., 166 f., 

197 f., 202, 203. 

Bartholomew Fair, 26, 43. 

Behn, Aphra, 108, 192 f . 

Belle Plaideuse, 15. 

Boileau, 8. 

Boisrobert, 15. 

Borrowing, forms of, 83 ff., 

133 ff., 162 ff. 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 13, 104, 

105. 
Brown, Thomas, 82. 
Bury Fair, 133 ff. 

Caryll, John, 80 f., 96. 
Centlivre, Susanna, 97. 
Charles I, influence on the 

drama, 59 f. 
Cheats of Scapin, 85. 
Gibber, CoUey, 139. 
City Politics, 165 f. 



Collier, Jeremy, 82, 210. 
Comedies of Moli^re, classi- 
fication of, 9 ff. 
Comedy and tragedy, dis- 
tinction between, 4 ff. 
Comedy before Moli^re, 13 ff. 
Comedy of humors, 32, 34 f. 
Comedy of intrigue, 10, 14, 

32 f., 100 ff. 
Comedy of manners, 33. 
before and after Restoration, 

38 ff. 
before Restoration, 33 ff. 
in Restoration, 192 ff. 
Comedy of manners and 

character, 12 ff., 109 f. 
Comedy, nearness of, to facts 

of life, 4 ff. 
Comedy, Plautine conception 

of, 25 f . 
Comedy, Restoration, ll,32f., 
192 ff., 218 ff. 
after the Revolution, 207 ff. 
characters in, 133 ff. 
dialogue of, 161 ff. 
differences from previous 

English comedy, 38 ff. 
intrigue of, 102 ff., 11 Iff. 
spirit of, 43 ff. 
subject-matter of, 40 ff. 
Comedy, Spanish, 5, 14, 
32 f., 60,84, 101 f., 167 f., 
190 f. 
Comic and humorous, differ- 
ence between, 3. 
Comic, definition of the, 2 f. 
Comic spirit of Moli^re, 23 ff. 



269 



270 



INDEX 



Commedia delV arte, 5, 14, 20, 

100 f., 102, 151, 162, 190. 
Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, 13. 
Congreve, William, 38, 45, 

83,98, 109, 113, 119, 128f., 

163 ff., 185 £f., 194 ff., 210, 

215, 216. 
Corey, John, 81. 
Corneille, Pierre, 15. 
Corneille, Thomas, 14. 
Country Wife, 73, 75, 112, 120, 

155 f., 201, 213. 
Country Wit, 76, 146, 193. 
Critique de I'Ecole des Femmes, 

82, 181. 
Crowne, John, 60, 76, 95, 119, 

131,139, 142, 146f.,158f., 

165 ff., 193. 

Davenant, Sir William, 59, 

64, 79 f., 85. 
Denouement in Moli^re, 17. 
Dipit Amour eux, 10, 63, 119, 

140, 168, 172, 201. 
Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, 15. 
Don Garde, 11. 
Don Juan, 83, 114. 
Double Dealer, 119, 195 ff., 

200, 201, 202, 203. 
Drama, divisions of, 4, 31 f. 
Dryden, John, 31, 32, 36, 43, 

62, 76 ff., 88, 95, 98, 109, 

111, 112,115, 141 f., 157 f., 
170 ff., 180, 182, 189, 216. 

Dumb Lady, 88 ff. 

Durfey, Thomas, 81, 108, 192 f. 

Echegaray, 4, 84. 

Ecole des Femmes, 12, 18, 81, 

112, 120, 155, 202, 206. 
Ecole des Maris, 12, 83, 111, 

140, 156, 202. 
English Friar, 95, 147, 158 f. 
Epsom Wells, 117, 194. 
Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 98. 



Etheredge, Sir George, 36, 

39, 61, 62 ff., 119, 123, 
128, 135 ff., 177, 178 ff., 186, 
214, 216. 

Etourdi, 10, 77, 102. 
Evening's Love, 77, 171 f. 

Fdcheux, 121. 
Farce, French, 5, 13 f., 24. 
Farquhar, George, 215 ff. 
Femmes Savantes, 13, 18, 25, 

110, 122, 130, 189. 
Fletcher, John, 16, 33, 37, 39, 

40, 45, 46, 50, 51, 59, 102, 
108, 220, 221. 

Fourberies de Scapin, 10, 103. 

Gaiety of Moli^re, 23. 
Galerie du Palais, 15. 
Gentleman Dancing Master, 
72,74,75, 148, 156, 168 f. 

Hauptmann, Gerhardt, 4, 84. 
Hotel de RambouiUet, 19, 21. 
Humorous and comic, distinc- 
tion between, 3. 

Ibsen, 4, 118. 

Jonson, Ben, 15, 24, 25f., 32, 
34, 36, 41, 43, 46, 47, 59, 
153, 221. 

Lacy, John, 88 ff., 101, 133. 
Larivey, Pierre de, 14. 
Limberhara, 109, 141 f. 
Lope de Vega, 5, 98, 101, 108. 
Louis XIV, 7, 11, 18, 20 ff., 30. 
Love for Love, 83, 119, 129, 164, 

187 f., 197 f., 200, 201, 202, 

203. 
Love in a Tub, 62 ff., 71, 75, 

79, 162 f. 
Love in a Wood, 69, 71, 73, 75, 

125 ff., 147, 183 f. 
Love Triumphant, 95. 



INDEX 



271 



Maiden Queen, 172 f. 

Malade Imaginaire, 24, 118. 

Mamamouchi, 103 ff. 

Marriage d, la Mode, 77, 157. 

Married Beau, 193. 

Medbourne, Matthew, 85 ff., 
96, 131. 

Medecin malgre lui, 10, 23, 89, 
90, 91, 92, 101, 147 f. 

Melicerte, 11. 

Menander, 4f. 

Menteur, 10, 15. 

Metamorphosis, 81. 

Middleton, Thomas, 36, 38, 
39, 41, 45. 

Midsummer Night's Dream, 6, 
17. 

Miracle play, 5. 

Misanthrope, 13, 23, 29, 97, 
109, 110, 111, 116, 119, 
120, 122, 127, 128, 148, 
152, 154, 164 f., 183, 198 f., 
201, 202, 206 

Miser, 76, 97. 

Mistake, 85. 

Moli^re, attitude of Restora- 
tion playwrights toward, 
83ff.,103, 107, 118, 123ff., 
129 f., 131 f., 159 f., 169 ff. 
character-drawing of, 143 ff. 
classification of comedies of, 

9ff., 109 f. 
comic spirit of, 23 ff . 
dialogue of, 162 ff. 
French characteristics of, 

16 ff. 
gaiety of, 23 f . 
influence of, on Congreve, 
113, 121, 128 f., 163 ff., 
194 ff. 
influence of, on Crowne, 
142, 146 f., 158 f., 165 ff., 
169, 193. 
influence of, on Dryden, 
76 ff., lllf., 141 f., 157 f. 



influence of, on Etheredge, 

62, 63, 64 f., 66 ff., 117f., 

123 ff., 180 ff. 
influence of, on Farquhar, 

215 f. 
influence of, on Lacy, 88 ff. 
influence of, on Love in a 

Tub, 63, 64. 
influence of, on Love in a 

Wood, 69 ff. 
influence of, on Shadwell, 

115ff. 
influence of, on Vanbrugh, 

212. 
influence of, on Wycherley, 

68 ff., 73ff., 112f., 120 f., 

125ff.,142f.,147f., 155ff., 

168f., 183ff. 
interest in life, 6. 
keen observation, 8 f . 
plot-structure of, 109 ff. 
satire of, 17, 67, 74. 
sketch of life of, 6ff. 
use of contrast, 140 f . 
view of life, 27 ff. 
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 

10, 95, 104, 105, 107. 
Mulberry Garden, 71, 83. 

New Comedy of Greece, 4f., 
100. 

Old Bachelor, 109, 119, 121, 

195, 201 f. 
Otway, Thomas, 85, 103. 

Pluin Dealer, 44, 73, 74, 75, 
112 f., 120, 127, 148, 183, 
213. 

Plautus, 100, 101, 190. 

Playhouse to be Let, 79. 

Precieuses Ridicules, 12, 62, 
68, 73, 80, 105, 107, 113, 
128, 133, 135, 137 f., 162, 
176, 181. 



272 



INDEX 



Princesse d' Elide, 11. 
Provoked Wife, 2r3. 
Psyche, 11. 

Racine, Jean, 4, 114. 
Ravenscroft, Edward, 87 f., 

103 ff., 133. 
Regnard, 26. 
Rehearsal, 77. 
Relapse, 44, 209 f., 211 f. 
Restoration Comedy. See 

Comedy, Restoration. 
Restoration, moral tone of, 

53 ff. 
Rotrou, 14, 84. 

Scarron, 14, 84. 

Scowrers, 209. 

Scribe, 26, 122. 

Secentismo, 175 f., 178, 186, 

189. 
Sedley, Sir Charles, 71, 83. 
Sganarelle, 12, 80, 172. 
Shadwell, Thomas, 32, 76, 

115 ff., 133, 194, 208, 209. 
Shakspere, 4, 16, 24, 25, 31, 

149 ff., 206. 
She Would if She Could, 65, 

67, 71, 75, 123 ff., 132, 

179 f. 
Shirley, James, 37, 42, 45, 51, 

59, 220. 
Short View, Collier's, 82, 210. 
Sicilien, 11. 

Sir Anthony Love, 209. 
Sir Barnahy Whig, 81. 
Sir Courtly Nice, 60, 119, 147. 
Sir Fopling Flutter, 62, 135 ff. 
Sir Martin Mar- All, 77. 
Sir Patient Fancy, 108. 
Sir Salomon, 81. 



Southerne, Thomas, 208 f . 
Squire of Alsatia, 194. 
Stage-Beaux tossed in a Blan- 
ket, 82. 
Sullen Lovers, 76, 116. 

Tartuffe, Medbourne's, 85 ff. 

Moli^re's, 13, 24, 28, 82, 95, 

109, 110, 118, 119, 120, 

130, 145, 146 f., 150, 154, 

158, 172, 181, 195 ff., 202. 

Tempest, 17. 

Terence, 100. 

Tomkis, Thomas, 82. 

Tragedy and comedy, differ- 
ence between, 4 ff. 

Tuke, Sir Samuel, 59 f., 103. 

Unities, 39 f., 114 ff. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 85, 139, 

209 ff., 217. 
Virtuoso, 117. 
Visionnaires, 15. 
Volunteers, 117. 

Way of the World, 113, 119, 
189, 198 f., 200, 201, 202. 

Wild Gallant, 62, 64. 

Wit in Restoration Comedy, 
170 ff. 

Wright, Thomas, 96. 

Wycherley, William, 34, 39, 
45, 61, 68 ff., 109, 112 f., 
120 f., 125 ff., 128, 142 f., 
147 f., 155 ff.. 168 f., 177, 
182 ff., 186, 205, 212, 214, 
216. 

Zelinde, 8. 



studies in Comparative Literature 



A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE 
RENAISSANCE 

With Special Reference to the Influence of Italy in the 

Formation and De<velopment of Modern Classicism 

By JOEL ELIAS SPINGARN 

Cloth, i2mo pp. xi + 350 $i-S^> ^'^ 

Second edition, revised and augmented 

ROMANCES OF ROGUERY 

c4n Episode in the History of the No<vel 

By FRANK WADLEIGH CHANDLER 

In Two Parts. — Part I. : " The Picaresque Novel in Spain." 

Cloth, i2mo pp. ix + 483 $2.00, net 

SPANISH LITERATURE IN THE ENGLAND OF 
THE TUDORS 

By JOHN GARRETT UNDERBILL 

Cloth, i2mo pp. X + 438 ^2.00, net 

THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

By HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR 

Sometime Lecttcrer in Literature at Columbia University 
Author of "Ancient Ideals" 

Cloth, i2mo pp. xvi + 400 J?i-75> net 

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND 

By LEWIS EINSTEIN 
Illustrated Cloth, i2mo pp. xvii + 420 Jj^i-So, net 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents 

66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



studies in Comparative Literature 



PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY OF THE SIX- 
TEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 

By JOHN SMITH HARRISON 
Cloth, l2mo pp. xi + 235 $2.00, net 

IRISH LIFE IN IRISH FICTION 

By HORATIO SHEAFE KRANS 
Cloth, i2mo pp. vii + 338 ^1.50, nee 

THE ENGLISH HEROIC PLAY 

c4 Critical description of the l^ymed Tragedy of the 
Restoration 

By LEWIS NATHANIEL CHASE 
Cloth, i2mo pp. xii + 250 ;^2.oo, net 

THE ORIENTAL TALE IN ENGLAND IN THE EIGH- 
TEENTH CENTURY 

By MARTHA PIKE CONANT 
Cloth, i2mo pp. xxvi + 312 J552.00, net 

THE FRENCH INFLUENCE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 

From the cAccession of Elizabeth to the Restoration 

By ALFRED HORATIO UPHAM 

Cloth, i2mo pp. ix + 560 ^2.00, net 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents 
66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

Columbia University in the City of New York 



The Press was incorporated June 8, 1893, to promote the pub- 
lication of the results of original research. It is a private corpora- 
tion, related directly to Columbia University by the provisions that 
its Trustees shall be officers of the University and that the Presi- 
dent of Columbia University shall be President of the Press. 



The publications of the Columbia University Press include works 
on Biography, History, Economics, Education, Philosophy, Lin- 
guistics, and Literature, and the following series : 

Columbia University Biological Series. 

Columbia University Studies in Classical Philology. 

Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature, 

Columbia University Studies in English. 

Columbia University Geological Series. 

Columbia University Germanic Studies. 

Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series. 

Columbia University Contributions to Oriental History and 
Philology. 

Columbia University Oriental Studies. 

Columbia University Studies in Romance Philology and Liter- 



ature. 



Blumenthal Lectures. Hewitt Lectures. 

Carpentier Lectures. Jesup Lectures. 

Catalogues will be sent free on application. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOKK 



